Speak is a built-in feature of Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, and OneNote. You can use Speak to have text read aloud in the language of your version of Office.
Text-to-speech (TTS) is the ability of your computer to play back written text as spoken words. Depending upon your configuration and installed TTS engines, you can hear most text that appears on your screen in Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, and OneNote. For example, if you're using the English version of Office, the English TTS engine is automatically installed. To use text-to-speech in different languages, see Using the Speak feature with Multilingual TTS.
To learn how to configure Excel for text-to-speech, see Converting text to speech in Excel.
Add Speak to the Quick Access Toolbar
You can add the Speak command to your Quick Access Toolbar by doing the following in Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, and OneNote:
- Next to the Quick Access Toolbar, click Customize Quick Access Toolbar.
- Click More Commands.
- In the Choose commands from list, select All Commands.
- Scroll down to the Speak command, select it, and then click Add.
- Click OK.
Use Speak to read text aloud
After you have added the Speak command to your Quick Access Toolbar, you can hear single words or blocks of text read aloud by selecting the text you want to hear and then clicking the Speak icon on the Quick Access Toolbar.
Learn more
Set Up Enhanced Dictation
![Text speech voice Text speech voice](/uploads/1/2/6/8/126888713/976564458.jpg)
Using Voice Dictation
Mac Text To Speech Voices
Dictation Commands
- Punctuation: Apostrophe (‘), open bracket ([) and close bracket (]), open parenthesis(() and close parenthesis ()) open brace ({) and close brace (}), open angle bracket(<) and close angle bracket (>), colon (:), comma (,), dash (-), ellipsis or dot dot dot(…), exclamation mark (!), hyphen (–), period or point or dot or full stop (.), question mark (?), quote and end quote (“), begin single quote and end single quote (‘),semicolon (;)
- Typography: Ampersand (&), asterisk (*), at sign (@), backslash (), forward slash (/),caret (^), center dot (·), large center dot (•), degree sign (°), hashtag or pound sign(#), percent sign (%), underscore (_), vertical bar (|).
- Currency: Dollar sign ($), cent sign (¢), pound sterling sign (£), euro sign (€), yen sign(¥)
- Emoticons: Cross-eyed laughing face (XD), frowny face (:-(), smiley face (:-)), winky face (;-))
- Intellectual property: Copyright sign (©), registered sign (®), trademark sign (™)
- Math: Equals sign (=), greater than sign (>), less than sign (<), minus sign (-),multiplication sign (x), plus sign (+)
- Line spacing: new line, new paragraph, tab key
- Say numeral or roman numeral and speak a number. For example, if you say “eight,” it will appear as 8 or VIII.
- Say no space on, say something, and then say no space off. For example, if you say “good day sir,” your words would appear as “gooddaysir”.
- Say caps on, say something, and say caps off. The words you spoke will appear in Title Case.
- Say all caps on, say something, and then say all caps off. The words you spoke will appear in ALL CAPS.
- Say all caps and say a word — the next word you speak will appear in ALL CAPS
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