Dock folders display question

[montylee]

With Snow Leopard I find that when I click on a folder in the dock that I will get a pop-up window of the items in the folder. I have used the defaults of Snow Leopard (Sort by - Name, Display as - Stack, View contents as - List).

I find that with my MacPro if I press a key the window scrolls to the item, or if already in the window it will highlight the icon starting with that letter. However, on my wife's iMac with Snow Leopard, the key press does nothing.

So what have I done wrong or configured differently such that it works on my Mac but not hers?

Also, is there a keyboard shortcut that when the display appears (i.e. you've clicked the folder on the dock) to get it to open the folder? I know I can scroll to the end and then highlight "Open in Finder" but I wonder if there is a key to press to get it to open or to jump to "open in Finder" so that the return key works? (I already know about Control-click on the folder, but am looking for a quick solution if you've just clicked on the dock folder).

Thanks for any tips.