The Dictate feature in Microsoft Word and other Microsoft Office apps is a handy little built-in feature. As the name suggests, it allows users to dictate content and have Office convert it into text. Microsoft is announcing this week that Dictate is receiving an update to add new languages.
Specifically, Microsoft says the feature now supports several new languages. There are now a total of 12 languages available on the tool. Those are: Hindi, English, Korean, Portuguese, Thai, Italian, French, Russian, Spanish, German, and Chinese.
Dictate in Microsoft Office is a speech-to-text services built into Microsoft Words, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Excel.
Originally launched as a Microsoft Garage project in 2017, Dictate was promoted to a full Microsoft Office feature in 2018. On its debut, it was available in Word and OneNote desktop apps. The tool was eventually brought to Word Online and other Office apps later that same year.
AI Feature
Dictate is part of Microsoft's Office Intelligent Services division, which aims to create AI-based solutions for the productivity suite. Using Dictate is simple thanks to a button located in the toolbar on Office applications.
Once the button is selected, users can talk out loud and Dictate will perform a speech-to-text conversion and put it into the document. Dictate is surprisingly accurate and to prove it this paragraph was written using the tool.
Users can access the feature for free within Office apps on Windows and Mac, although a Microsoft 365 subscription is necessary. If you want to know more about Dictate and how to use it, check out Microsoft's official page here.
Tip of the day: With many reachable wireless access points popping up and disappearing again, the available networks list can become quite annoying. If needed you can use the allowed and blocked filter list of Windows 10 to block certain WiFi networks or all unknown WiFi networks.
