The tool is intelligent but not omniscient. Limitations of Microsoft Dictate as a speech to text toolĪs impressive as the tool is, there are some limitations in Microsoft Dictate.

By composing the bulk of a newsletter or email by voice dictation, an employee can avoid 85 to 90% of the keyboard and mouse usage normally required to do so. This could include people who haven’t formally learned to touch-type as well as those with physical limitations or even certain reading disorders like dyslexia.ĭictate can also be a boon to anyone with repetitive stress injury, where long periods of typing can exacerbate an injury. The most obvious one is as an assistive speech to text tool for anyone who’s not particularly comfortable typing. There are a variety of commands that Microsoft suggests to use to get the most out of the Dictate tool. You can add basic punctuation as you talk by saying words like “period,” “comma,” or “open parentheses.” Or you can let Microsoft try to get it right by clicking on the settings on the Dictate widget and choosing “Auto punctuation.” All the same computational power and machine learning powers this dictation function within Microsoft 365.

Microsoft has been hard at work and developing speech recognition for Cortana and Microsoft Translator, and the company has even made recent acquisitions in this space. You’ll sometimes see it replace a mistake after the fact with what you actually said. Microsoft Dictate is intelligent, analyzing what you say and correcting itself as it goes. Once you see the “Listening…” text, simply start speaking, and what you say will be transcribed into your program. Click that, and you’ll hear a sound that indicates Microsoft is now listening to your speech. You’ll probably see a small popup with a microphone button. To use Microsoft Dictate, click the button in the menu to get started.

(It will probably look like a microphone with a record button.) Using Microsoft Dictate for speech to text To find it, simply open one of those programs and look for a dictate button in the home section of the menu. If you’re using the latest version of Microsoft 365, Dictate is already present inside many of the most popular standalone apps, including Outlook, Word, and PowerPoint. Here’s how to use it, plus a review of its functionality. Have you ever wanted a quicker way to input information into your documents, emails, and presentations within Microsoft 365? Microsoft Dictate is an excellent speech to text solution that’s built into your favorite Microsoft apps.

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