Categories: TutorialsWindows

How to dictate in Word with your voice with this simple trick

The latest Word updates have brought one of the most interesting features regarding the productivity of the application to the Microsoft office suite. And it is not even that voice dictation, a function that allows us to dictate any text in Word through the computer’s microphone. Unfortunately, the function is disabled by default, which forces us to activate the dictator by voice manually, a process that we will detail below.

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How to be able to dictate in Word: this is how you can activate voice dictation

Activating the voice dictation of Word is really simple if we have the latest versions of the Microsoft suite. With the document open, we will go to the Home tab, which opens by default if we have not edited the application’s configuration panel.

The available options may vary depending on the version of Word.

Within this tab, we will click on the Dictate button which can be seen in the image above, but not without first setting the dictation language, which will generally coincide with the language that we have previously selected on Windows or Mac.

The other option is resort directly to the command Windows Icon + H with Word open. Voice dictation will automatically be activated if we have configured the language. Unfortunately the command is not available on Mac.

Dictate does not appear in Word, how to activate the dictation microphone

Sometimes it may be the case that the Dictate option does not appear in Word. Before proceeding with its manual activation, we will have to meet a series of requirements to use voice dictation in Microsoft Word. Specifically, the Microsoft requirement sheet is as follows:

Have a legal Windows 10 license.
Have a legal Microsoft Office license.
Have Microsoft Office 365 or a version of the program equal to or greater than Microsoft Office 2019. The Office Home and Business versions are excluded.

If we meet the requirements, the next thing we will have to do is refer to the File menu, specifically to the Options section. Within this section, we will click on Customize Ribbon, where finally click on Voice to add it manually to the Most used commands list displayed in the pop-up window.

This is what the settings menu looks like on Mac.

The way to proceed on Mac is similar, although this time we will have to access Preferences by clicking on Word in the upper options menu. Finally, we will click on Toolbar and Ribbon, where we will be shown a list of options similar to the one we can see in Windows.

Is the voice typing function still not showing or not working properly? So most likely we have not configured Windows speech recognition. Inside the Start button of the system (Windows logo), we will click on the gear corresponding to the Settings menu. In Time and language, we will click on Voice and finally on Microphone. Now we just have to click on the relevant button (Start) to configure voice recognition correctly.

In case the system does not recognize our voice, it may be the case that the drivers sound are not installed correctly. The solution is through install them manually through the manufacturer’s website or through third-party programs. In this other article we show how to proceed step by step.