Microsoft has now released a new build to Windows Office Insiders with new dictate feature. Using this feature, users can now their voice to write documents, compose emails, take notes and create presentations in Word, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote. This new Office dictation feature uses Microsoft’s state of art speech recognition technology to convert speech to text.
Dictate is one of the Office Intelligent Services, bringing the power of the cloud to Office apps to help save you time and produce better results.
This feature will be available only to Office 365 subscription users. And yes, you need an active internet connection to enjoy this feature.
Here’s how it works:
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Open the Office application.
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Turn on your microphone and ensure it works.
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Select Dictate, wait for the icon to turn red and then start talking. As you talk text appears in your document, email, slide or page.
- Speak clearly and conversationally. When you do this, it picks up on your pauses and inserts punctuation for you.
- When you are done, select Dictate again to stop typing.
It supports following punctuations:
- Period
- Comma
- Question mark
- New line
- New paragraph
- Semi-colon
- Colon
Last year, Microsoft Garage released a project called Dictate which did the same above functionality. We guess Microsoft has now decided to integrate the Garage project directly into the Office apps.
Source: Microsoft