Make sure the Mac computer and Office can ‘hear’ you. It’s also context sensitive, using whole spoken phrases to work out the right words (instead of the old method which converted each spoken word individually).Īnother improvement is microphones, especially in laptops, which now pick up speech with better fidelity.

It’s being improved regularly and isn’t as dependant on the speed of your computer. In this article we’ll look at how Dictate works in Word and Outlook for Mac.ĭictation in Word 365 (and Outlook 365) is cloud based. No compromises or differences except the setup is a LOT easier.ĭictate is only available to Microsoft 365 subscribers with Office 365 software for Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad and Android devices. Which is good training to speak better anyway 😁 ✅ Like every software, there is a learning curve and adaptation time, eg to learn the voice commands to use.Mac Word 365 and Outlook 365 have the same powerful ‘Speech to Text’ option, Dictate, that’s in the Windows version of Word and Outlook. ✅ Good quality microphone improves speech recognition ✅ You need to articulate properly. Activate it under System Preferences > Siri Activate it under System Preferences > Accessibility > Voice Controlģ️⃣ Siri while this is the future and it enables you already commands and requests beyond simply controlling your computer, it is more clunky to use at present for dictation purposes in my opinion. Recently started using this instead of Keyboard Dictation. It also runs indefinitely it seems so great for staying always on or long-form writing. Activate it under System Preferences > Keyboard > DictationĢ️⃣ Voice Control more powerful, as you can command your Mac with it too (eg “Open Word… new doc” opens a new Word doc) and build a custom Vocabulary list of words specific to your needs/business.

This is what I have used for the better part of the last 2 years and recommend to start here. It is good enough for most use, as you need time to formulate what you are going to write next. There are 3 ways on Mac to do dictation, so it can be a bit confusing:ġ️⃣ Keyboard Dictation works everywhere, activated with keyboard shortcut (I hit Cmd twice) and runs for a limited amount of time. It is surprisingly easy and good, so wanted to share for others maybe to try.

I can not think about working anymore without dictation. In the last 2 years I have probably dictated 75% of everything I wrote, incl.

Talk to text macbook air