Microsoft Office can read aloud, talk or speak the text of documents to you. It’s possible in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote. Computer speaking text is mainly suggested for various disabled users under the ‘Accessibility’ name. But ‘Speak’ is also useful if you’re just tired of reading the screen or are proof-reading from another document. Officially it’s called TTS ‘text-to-speech’ and is part of Windows.

Office makes use of that Windows sub-system. Configuration of the Speak/Read feature is done in Windows, as we’ll see below.

Word 2016 for Windows has two similar features. Speak – has been in the last few versions of Word for Windows. Read Aloud – is a new, improved version of Speak available in the most recent Word 2016 releases (as usual, Office 365 subscribers only).

Yosemite continues to improve on speech recognition in Macintoshes by offering a host of tools that let you get more work done in a shorter amount of time as well as provide voice control for those Mac owners who have difficulty with or are unable to use a traditional keyboard, mouse, or trackpad. Then, when you're browsing the web, just select the article you want read and hit your shortcut to hear it read out loud. II usually send articles to Instapaper first, to avoid it getting confused.

Office for Mac has a Read/Speak option. Rather, the macOS has a speech feature which can be used in Office. You’ll find Speak on the ‘Commands not on the Ribbon’ list. The easiest choice is adding it to the Quick Access Toolbar. Now it’s on the QAT, select some text and click the Speak button. A somewhat mechanical voice will talk to you. If there’s no selection, Speak will say the current word at the cursor.

Changing Voices The controls for Speak or Read Aloud are in Windows Control Panel Speech Recognition Text to Speech. Voice Selection – the English language options are ‘David’ or ‘Zira’ – male or female. Preview Voice – click to hear the current voice. Voice speed – faster or slower than the Normal setting.

Read Aloud Read Aloud is much the same as Speak. It’s the same voice selection and settings in Windows.

What’s different aside from the name and a fresh round of Microsoft hype? Essentially, it’s an improved interface for Speak. ‘Read Aloud’ is promoted to the Review tab. If it’s not there, add it to the Quick Access Toolbar, as shown for ‘Speak’ above. Click on Read Aloud and Windows/Word will start speaking the text from the cursor onwards. New in Read Aloud is a little control panel on the top right of the document window. Back – jumps back to the start of the current or previous paragraph.

Play / Pause Forward – goes forward a paragraph. Settings – change the reading speed and voice without switching to Windows. Shortcut: Ctrl + Alt + Space will start or close Read Aloud. We can’t find a keyboard shortcut to pause / play the talk. That seems like an obvious, if not essential, part of the feature. Read Aloud in Read Mode In Read Mode, Read Aloud is available from the bottom of the View menu.

Read Aloud spelling suggestions Text to Speech is also available in other parts of Word 2016 for Windows (Office 365 subscribers). One of the extended spell check right-click options is ‘Read Aloud’ to speak the suggested word.

Advertisement Lean back and listen: let your PC do the reading. Whether you generally dislike reading yourself or simply want to multitask from time to time, letting your computer read documents to you out loud can make life better. Windows comes, built in, with the ability to read text – it’s how anyone blind makes use of the operating system.

The feature we’re talking about does exactly what most of you tend to overlook, it automatically downloads app updates from the Mac App Store and applies them. But unfortunately, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution for this issue. Free apps for mac computer. Forgetting to update an app simply means that you miss out on all the newly added features, bug fixes and other important security enhancements. Sponsored Links I see that people don’t bother much about the routine system maintenance.