Speech to text

[keyop1972]

I was informed that I MS Office/Word 2004 has a built in feature where
you can convert speech to text. I was informed that the
student/teacher version has this as well as the Professional version.
Can anyone confirm this for me, and tell me how to do it?

Thanks

 

[matt neuburg]

I was informed that I MS Office/Word 2004 has a built in feature where
you can convert speech to text.

Like Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, you were misinformed. What it has is
a built-in feature where you can convert text to speech - a very
different thing (and not terribly interesting, because this is also
built into the system). m.

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi,

I know of two programs that can convert speech to text on the Mac.

IBM ViaVoice
http://www.scansoft.com/viavoice/

and
MacSpeech
http://www.macspeech.com/

MacOSX has the ability to recognize voice commands, but is not a full
fledged text-to-speech tool. You'll find MacOSX controls in the
Universal Access system preferences.

-Jim

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Sorry: That's Word 2003, not 2004 (i.e. PC-only)

Word 2003 has rudimentary speech recognition. It works only if the
Installed language in use is English US, and only for speakers with a fairly
middle-American accent.

Most PC users find that Dragon Dictate does a better job (albeit, at a
higher price and requiring substantially more system resource). Dragon
doesn't put out a Mac version: as Jim says, IBM's ViaVoice is one way to go.

Cheers

I was informed that I MS Office/Word 2004 has a built in feature where
you can convert speech to text. I was informed that the
student/teacher version has this as well as the Professional version.
Can anyone confirm this for me, and tell me how to do it?

Thanks

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi again,

I tried the text-to-speech feature in Windows Office 2003, but as John
says it is rudimentary.

So regardless of whether you are using Macintosh Office 2004 or Windows
Office 2003 if you want to really use text-to-speech then purchase a
program that is designed entirely for that purpose.

-Jim