Bags and Bank

WowVision reads your bags and your bank as lists of slots that you can walk through, pick up from, use, sell and rearrange with the keyboard. This page explains how the bags window is laid out on each game version, what a slot says, and how to move, use and destroy items with the cursor.

Opening your bags

Open your bags with the game’s own keys, exactly as a sighted player does (B for all bags, or the backpack key). When any bag is open, the bags window appears in WowVision.

The bags window is a background window. It also opens by itself next to a merchant, the mailbox, the bank or a trade, because the game opens your bags there. The merchant, mailbox or bank keeps the focus. Press Ctrl+Tab to switch to the bags and Ctrl+Tab again to come back. See Navigating windows.

Close the bags the way the game does, by pressing the bag key again.

If the addon Sku is loaded, WowVision leaves the bags to Sku and does not read them.

Bag shape: grid or list

The Bag Shape setting (Windows, then Containers) decides how the slots of one bag are read.

In the grid shape, Up and Down follow the position in the row, not the screen column. On some bags a short row sits at the top, pushed to the right. From the first cell of that short row, Down lands on the first cell of the row below, so you never skip anything when you read from the top left downward.

Home and End jump to the first or last slot (in a grid, of the current row). Change the setting in the WowVision menu. See Menu and settings.

What a slot says

An empty slot says “Empty”. A slot with an item says the item’s name followed by its quality colour as a word, and the stack count.

• Classic Era, TBC and Mists: “Linen Cloth, White 12”, “Heavy Leather Ball, White”.
• Retail and WoW: Forever: “Linen Cloth, White, 12”. After the count the slot may add Quest Item, New, Locked (the item is in use, for example on the cursor) and Filtered (the slot does not match the bag search). While the game has not yet sent an item’s name, the slot says Loading.

The colour word follows the game’s quality colours: Grey (poor), White (common), Green (uncommon), Blue (rare), Purple (epic), Orange (legendary), Light Gold (artifact), Light Blue (heirloom). You can switch individual colours off in the Tooltip settings under Quality. See Tooltips.

The slot label is live. If you pick up an item, the slot you are standing on says “Empty” at once. If you drop one in, it says the new item.

Press Space for the full tooltip of the item.

What you can do with a slot

The context menu is the quickest way to find out what Backspace will do. Each click entry is named for its effect, for example “Sell, Right Click” or “Equip, Right Click”.

What a right click does

The game decides this by which windows are open. In the order WowVision checks:

The left click entry says Pick Up, or Place Item while you hold something.

Splitting a stack

To split a stack, press Shift+Enter on the slot. The game opens a small box that asks how many items to take; WowVision does not read it. Type the amount, press Enter, and put the new stack down with Enter on an empty slot.

The cursor

WoW moves things with a cursor. You pick something up and the game holds it on the cursor until you put it down. WowVision does not speak a separate message when something lands on the cursor. Instead, check the slot you took it from: it now says “Empty”.

• To move an item, pick it up (Enter or \), walk to another slot and press Enter on it.
• To put an item into a bag, pick it up, then use Enter on the bag slot entry (see “Bag slots” below) or on a free slot of that bag.
• Items on the cursor are also used with other windows. You can put one on a trade slot, on a mail attachment or on a merchant to sell it. See Loot, trade and mail and NPCs.
• An item taken from a bag, a trade slot or a merchant is a real item. A spell, macro or other shortcut taken from an action bar is only a reference.

Destroying an item

You have to pick the item up first. This is on purpose, and it matches the game, where you drag an item away to destroy it. It also protects you from deleting the wrong thing.

Example: destroy a Broken Sword.

1. Walk to its slot in your bags.
2. Press Enter (or \) to pick it up.
3. Press Delete.
4. The game’s confirmation popup opens and WowVision reads it. See System windows. For common items the popup has a text and two buttons: read the text, Tab to the button that confirms and press Enter. Items of rare quality or better (heirlooms excepted) may also ask you to type the word DELETE into a text box before the confirm button works.
5. Pressing Escape or the cancel button leaves the item on your cursor. Put it back in a slot with Enter.

If you press Delete while nothing is on your cursor, nothing happens.

Classic Era, TBC and Mists bags

Each open bag is its own tab stop, in this order: backpack, then bags 1 to 4. Press Tab and Shift+Tab to move between bags, and the arrow keys to move inside one.

• The bag is announced by its name, for example “Backpack” or “Journeyman’s Backpack”. Bank bags are announced as “Bank: “ and their name.
• The first entry of a bag is its bag slot: “Bag Slot Backpack”. This is the button you put a new bag on, and you can pick up the bag from here. After it come the item slots.
• The bag slot buttons live inside each bag’s own stop, so you can only reach them while that bag is open.

The keyring (Classic Era and The Burning Crusade) is not read.

WowVision reads no sort button on these versions, even where the game draws one. Arrange items by hand or use the sorting your game version offers.

The bank on Classic Era, TBC and Mists

Walk up to a banker and open the bank. The bank window reads:

1. A stop named Bank with the bank’s own item slots.
2. A stop named Bank Bag Slots with the bank bag slots you own, each reading the bag’s name or “Empty” followed by the game’s own description of the slot. Put a bag in a slot with Enter, as with your own bag slots. Below the owned slots, when you can buy another one, WowVision reads the purchase text, “Costs” and the price, and a purchase button. Press Enter on the button to buy.
3. Each open bank bag appears as its own stop, named “Bank: “ and the bag name.

To move items between your bags and the bank, open both, pick an item up and press Enter on a free slot of the other. Or use Backspace on the item. With the bank open, a right click on a bag item moves it to the bank and a right click on a bank item moves it to your bags.

Retail and WoW: Forever bags

(Retail and WoW: Forever only.)

These versions have two bag views, which you pick in the game’s bag menu. WowVision follows what the game shows.

Combined bags

All your bags are drawn as one big grid, and WowVision reads it the same way: the backpack first, then the other bags, no bag boundaries. The window opens on the Bags stop. The stops are:

1. Bag Controls: Bag Menu, a dropdown with one submenu per bag (filters, clean up, switch bag view); Sort Bags; Money, which reads your gold, for example “Money, 12 Gold 5 Silver”; and Add Slots when the game offers it.
2. Search: a text box. Tab into it and type, and slots that do not match read Filtered. Tab out to leave it.
3. Bags: the slots, in the shape you chose (a grid is ten slots wide, with the first row possibly shorter). In the list shape the slots are in slot order, backpack first.
4. Bag Slots: a row with the bag slot buttons of the backpack and your four bags. Each reads “Bag Slot” and the bag’s name. The reagent bag and, on WoW: Forever, the keyring are drawn by the game as their own frames even in combined view. They are not in this row. Each gets a stop of its own, with its bag slot first, as in the individual view below.

A backpack of an account without an authenticator shows four extra slots that cannot hold anything. WowVision does not read these as slots. The Add Slots button is still in Bag Controls.

Example: find your Hearthstone with the search.

1. Open the bags with B. Press Ctrl+Tab if you are inside another window.
2. The window opens on Bags. Press Shift+Tab once to reach “Search”.
3. Type hearth. The slots that do not match now read Filtered.
4. Press Tab to the Bags stop and read slots with Down.

Individual bags

Each bag is its own window, as on Classic. Each open bag is a stop, announced by the bag’s name. The backpack key alone opens just the backpack. The game’s Open All Bags key (by default Shift together with the backpack key) opens everything.

• The first entry is the bag slot: “Bag Slot” and the bag name. Both clicks on it say Close Bag, or Place Item while you hold a bag. The bag’s own menu (filters, clean up, switch bag view) is in the slot’s context menu, as Bag Menu.
• Sort Bags, Money and Add Slots belong to the backpack. They appear in a stop called Bag Controls before the bags, followed by the Search stop. The window opens on the first bag.

Retail and WoW: Forever bank

(Retail and WoW: Forever only.)

The modern bank is one window that shows the character bank, and the Warband (account) bank. A banker opens it. The stops are:

1. Bank Tabs: a row with the tabs. These are the bank type tabs (character and Warband bank, named by the game), the page tabs on WoW: Forever, the side tabs for each bank tab on Retail (Enter selects, Backspace opens its settings on Retail), and the purchase tab. The current one says “selected”.
2. One stop per bank tab: its slots, named by the tab’s name. On WoW: Forever all purchased tabs of the current bank type are shown at once, on pages.
3. Bank Bag Slots (WoW: Forever): a row with the bank bag slot buttons, which can be picked up with the Drag key. A slot you have not bought reads Purchasable Bag Slot and the price. Press Enter on it to buy, and the game asks you to confirm. The game sells the next slot in line, whichever unbought slot you press Enter on.
4. Search: a text box.
5. Bank Controls: Sort Bank, Money (in the Warband bank this is the deposited gold, with the game’s deposit and withdraw buttons), and the price and purchase button for the next tab or bag.

A locked or not yet bought bank shows the game’s explanation instead of slots. It is read as a text under the name “Bank”.

Slots read like bag slots. Right click moves an item between bags and bank as on Classic: Move to Bank and Move to Bags.

Example: put an item in your Warband bank on Retail.

1. Open the bank. Press Tab until the tab row, and press Right until the Warband bank tab. Press Enter.
2. Press Ctrl+Tab to your bags, find the item, and press Enter to pick it up.
3. Ctrl+Tab back, walk to a free slot in the Warband bank, and press Enter to drop the item there.

Settings

The bags and the bank have one setting, Bag Shape, described above. Like every window, the bags have an Enabled switch in the WowVision menu, under Windows, then Containers. They have no alerts and no key bindings of their own. The keys on this page are the shared window keys, which can be changed in the keybinding window. See Keybindings.

Troubleshooting

• Nothing happens when I press Delete. Delete destroys only what is on the cursor. Pick the item up first.
• I cannot find the bags. They are a background window. Press Ctrl+Tab to cycle windows.
• Slot order seems backwards. Make sure Bag Shape is set to List for slot order. In Grid, rows follow the screen.