Who needs Office XP for speech recognition?

HillsCap · #1 (**permalink**) 01-07-2004, 05:59 PM

I finally figured out how to get speech recognition working for Office 2000 (the same speech recognition as for Office XP), as well as for Open Office. in fact, I'm typing with it right now.

I downloaded the Microsoft SAPI 5.1 and jiggered with it until I finally got it working in a sample program called dictpad.exe then, I downloaded the huge SDK for Microsoft speech recognition.

It's not perfect (mainly because I have a really junkie microphone), and it tends to leave spaces where spaces shouldn't be, and capitalized letters where capitalized letters shouldn't be, but I think it'll be really good for bulking up the content of our website quickly. I'll dictate into Microsoft Word 2000 or Open Office, clean it up so it looks like it was actually written by human hands, convert it to PDF format, and post it to our website.

That's just for our ebooks. Plus, I'll get my boss to train it with his voice, so he can enter his daily market commentary himself (instead of having me type it in... he never learned to type, and I'm no secretary).

One problem, though, I can't find the documentation that normally comes with Office XP explaining the voice commands for speech to text processing (I only have Office 2000, and can't find the XP documentation online). So, I'm not sure how to edit via voice (for instance telling it to delete the last word, or capitalize the first letter of a word).

Does anyone know what the voice commands are for Microsoft speech recognition? So far, the only ones I know are the symbols (#$%^&!~, etc.) and ForceNum (used to force typing a number, like "ForceNum Five" would print 5 to the screen, rather than five.)

Darren

ldyguique · #2 (**permalink**) 01-07-2004, 07:51 PM

<grin> a challenge? a research challenge? ooooh goodie!!!

I decided to give good ole Vivisimo a workout -- see if it would come up with more relevant searches than you'd been finding -- and I think I came up with something.

Speech Recognition in Office XP

Quote:

Making Changes and Corrections
Remember, you can use your keyboard and mouse whenever you want — even in the middle of dictating. You can make some corrections, however, orally. For example, if speech recognition completely misunderstands what you said, say “scratch that.” The most recently entered word or phrase is deleted. You can keep scratching text to back up until you reach the last correctly interpreted words.

In the sentence you previously dictated, you may have noticed that you said “period” at the end of the sentence and that speech recognition inserted the period character. You could have said “dot” to get the same result. Other punctuation characters and symbols you can enter include: comma, colon, semi-colon, question mark, exclamation point, hyphen, dollar sign, open or close parenthesis, open or close quote, and numbers (20 or less are spelled out, 21 and up are entered as digits). If you want all numbers displayed as digits, say “force num,” pause, and speak the digits.

To end one paragraph and start the next (or just to insert a blank line) say “paragraph.” To select text, say “voice command” and choose from the following options:

select word

select line

select paragraph

select all
To move the insertion point, you can say “up,” “down,” “right,” “left,” “next line word/paragraph,” or “last line/word/paragraph.”

You can also choose from the following text correction options while in the Voice Command mode:

delete

backspace

delete last word

delete next word
If you want to bold or italicize a word, for example, use the Voice Command mode to move to the word, say “select word,” and then say “bold” or “italic.” To change the font, say “font” and then say the name of the font.

Other Voice Commands
The Voice Command mode is also useful for making menu choices. Just speak the name of the menu, “file” for example, and the name of the menu option you want, such as “save.” Say “more” or “expand” to see all the menu options, if they are not immediately visible. If the wrong menu option opens or if you change your mind, say “escape” to close the menu.

You can choose from the toolbar options by saying their name, as well. (If you don’t know the name of the button, hover your pointer over the icon and read the Screen Tip that appears.)

Use the online Help feature to learn about more voice commands you can use to do the following:

Choose dialog box items

Select options from the task pane
You can also use online Help to learn about other methods for correcting speech recognition mistakes. As an example, you can move the insertion point to an incorrectly spelled word or a grammatical error (underlined in wavy red or wavy green, respectively). Then say “right-click” and “down” and “enter” when you reach the proper choice.

The more you use speech recognition, the more you will learn about it. And, remember, you can use speech recognition in other Office XP programs, such as Excel, Office, and PowerPoint.

HeadsUp!! I also found a MSKB article, OAER: Office Program Stops Responding When You Use Speech Recognition

And, Microsoft has an article for customizing commands -- Customize speech recognition voice commands in Office XP

Quote:

In addition to the commands listed in this article, in Voice Command mode you can give voice commands for just about anything you can read in an Office program. For example, if Bold is visible on the Formatting toolbar, you can bold selected text by saying "bold."

Note If you are in Voice Command mode and say "print," the file you are currently working on is sent to the printer.

And, if you go to office.microsoft.com and search for "more speech commands," you'll pick up about 100 articles; some of which may be pertinent.

Hope this helps out.

ronniethedodger · #3 (**permalink**) 01-08-2004, 07:42 PM

Darren - Here is a link to all XP speech recognition information at Microsoft.

http://office.microsoft.com/search/r...EC010331121033

It covers XP versions through a variety of Office programs besides just Word. Troubleshooting. Adding or removing from you dictionary. etc.

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