Have Microsoft Office Word Read Back To You

Table of Contents

Dictate In Microsoft Word
How To Focus On The Text
Conclusions

Dictate In Microsoft Word

I’ve got to admit I’m pretty excited about some of the new commands that come up in Microsoft Word. Remember with office 365 it’s a subscription. Microsoft now add new features all the time and you don’t even know it. Before, they use to tell you – we are going to update your system and you don’t really have a choice. Update, Shutdown and Restart.

I’d like to explore with you some features that most of us wouldn’t even know were there.

Everyone is time poor and time to explore and play with Microsoft Office new features isn’t something we tend to schedule time for, but if we did you might find some time saving techniques. This includes me. I have been delivering Microsoft Office now for over 25 years and even I don’t always get a lot of play time.

If you are like me and don’t have some to look over your content. Someone to pick up you used the word you when you meant to write your or you are. Using the dictate feature could help. It’s also great if you think faster than you can type.

How Does Dictate Work?

You will need to have an Internet connection.

Next in the Home tab at the very end you will see a Microphone icon. Click the Dictate icon and start talking. Even if you have an accent give it time, ensure you practice so that it can get use to your voice.

There are some key words to remember.

To end a sentence, you can all so say the command. “Full Stop”.

Command For Make Bullet Style

You would think the command to make something with Bullet points would be “Make Bullet Point”.

However, this does not work. If you google you will get the response of –

How Do I Dictate Bullet Points?

Say “Make That Bullet Style” or “Make That Numbered”. Dictate your points, saying “New Line” as needed to start a new point. Once your list is complete, end it by saying “Make That Not Bullet Style” or “Make That Not Numbered”.

However, these commands do not work.

If you do find the command that works for making bullets. I would love to hear from you in the comments area below.

Let Word Read Your Text Back To You.

Our sense of hearing can be especially useful.  Close your eyes so you don’t get distracted by your sense of sight and focus on the words that are being read out to you.

Go to the Review Tab and on the left, you will find a command for Read Aloud.

The sound of someone’s voice can either be irritating, soothing or pleasant to listen to. This is why Microsoft have given us the choice of speaker. Press the speaker icon with the clog wheel.

There is a choice of only two voice types, male and female their names are James and Catherine, in time there me more choices.

Speed of speech is also something you will need to adjust under the same setting. Position your cursor where you would like the Read Aloud to start from or you might prefer to select a specific paragraph to listen to by pressing the Play button.

I found the Read Aloud feature in Microsoft Word useful to listen out for where to position or not position a comma. With this tool I’m able to pick up on punctuation like you, your, you’re.

Are You Easily Distracted?

If we could take away temporarily all the Ribbon commands and highlight the text more. Would that help you concentrate on the wording in your document. Microsoft seem to think this will help and they have named this feature “Focus”, are they trying to tell me something.

Go to the View Tab and select Focus have a look.

What do you think, was it helpful? Use the comments below to let me know.

Reading is a big problem going through primary school. Breaking down the words into syllables. Listening to the words, sounding them out. In Microsoft Word using the Immersive Reader will help with this.

Focus and Immersive reader

From the immersive reader you are able to break down how you want to see the text by narrowing or widening the column width. I particularly like the feature where it highlights one line or two at a time. When you are ready to break down larger words you can use the syllables feature. You can find all this under the View Tab and Select Immersive Reader.

Conclusions

Reading is a big problem for many people. Some slip through the cracks of the school system and once they hit there working life, struggle take place. Technology is our saviour here. Know we don’t have to get bogged down with grammar and spelling because Microsoft Word will highlight these for us in red for spelling and green for grammar. However we still need to read. I am one of those people who don’t like to read but tough luck reading is inevitable.  Microsoft Office Word feature focus is great making you read the text and not get distracted with other imagery. The immersive feature is fantastic, breaking text into syllables I think is brilliant. The one line focus at a time is also pretty cool.

If you are more of a listener than a reader you might like to try my Podcast Channel – Analir Pisani

(Spotify, ItunesRadio, Stitcher, OneCloud, iheartRadio….)