Skip to main content

Microsoft Garage releases Dictate, letting you talk to your Office apps

Microsoft Windows 10 is chock full of ways to input information. There is the keyboard, of course, which comes in both physical and software versions. Then there’s Windows 10 Ink, which provides solid handwriting recognition to go along with its excellent drawing capabilities. Another important input mechanism, particularly for anyone with a physical challenge, is voice input. Speaking your words to a PC can be a liberating experience for some people, and while Windows has always had a form of dictation built in, Microsoft Garage has another option in Microsoft Dictate.

Dictate is built on the same voice-recognition technology that powers Microsoft Translator and other products and services build on Microsoft Cognitive Services. That means that it benefits from Microsoft’s industry-leading research into using artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve a computer’s ability to understand spoken languages.

Recommended Videos

Microsoft Dictate works just like a number of other voice-recognition solutions, such as Nuance’s Dragon Dictate. It is a little different from some in that it is specifically an Office add-in, meaning it works with the desktop version of Office. You need to download the right version, either 32-bit or 64-bit, and then run through the installation process.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Once you install the add-in, it will be available in Office apps including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. You then have another menu option available dubbed “Dictation,” and selecting that lets you start and stop dictation. While dictation is running, you have access to a number of commands, including:

  • New Line: Takes cursor to new line
  • Delete: Removes the last line you dictated
  • Stop Dictation: Terminates the dictation session
  • Full stop or period: Types period character (.)
  • Question mark: Types (?)
  • Open Quote: Types (“)
  • Close Quote: Types (”)
  • Colon: Types (:)
  • Comma: Types (,)

In addition, Dictate supports more than 20 languages for the dictation process itself and it can provide real-time translation between 60 languages. English language support includes both automatic and manual punctuation, and the system provides for real-time visual feedback showing that speech is being processed.

If you have been looking for a good way to speak to your Windows PC using your Office apps, then Dictate might be a great solution. Keep in mind that Microsoft Garage products don’t always last forever, however, and so it is entirely possible that Microsoft could kill the project.

Mark Coppock
Mark Coppock is a Freelance Writer at Digital Trends covering primarily laptop and other computing technologies. He has…
3 open source AI apps you can use to replace your ChatGPT subscription
Phone running Deepseek on a laptop keyboard.

The next leg of the AI race is on, and has expanded beyond the usual players, such as OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Microsoft. In addition to the dominance of the tech giants, more open-source options have now taken to the spotlight with a new focus in the AI arena.

Various brands, such as DeepSeek, Alibaba, and Baidu, have demonstrated that AI functions can be developed and executed at a fraction of the cost. They have also navigated securing solid business partnerships and deciding or continuing to provide AI products to consumers as free or low-cost, open source models, while larger companies double down on a proprietary, for-profit trajectory, hiding their best features behind a paywall.

Read more
iPhone now lets you make WhatsApp your default for messages and calls, here’s how
WhatsApp.

iPhone users can now get setup so that WhatsApp is their default messaging and calling app.

If your iPhone is updated to iOS 18.2 then the functionality is already available for you right now.

Read more
Microsoft will soon use AI to help you find your photos and files on Copilot+ PCs
The Surface Laptop shown in front of a Copilot+ sign.

In a Windows Insider blog post, Microsoft announced an AI upgrade to Windows Search to make finding photos, documents, and settings easier. However, the enhanced feature is restricted to Copilot+ PCs with Snapdragon processors; AMD and Intel support is coming soon.

The update has all the same fixes and improvements from build 26100.3613; nonetheless, some of the best Copilot+ PCs will be left out simply because they use  AMD or Intel processors. Microsoft will release the update gradually, and you can also take advantage of both semantic and lexical indexing to search for your photos and documents more efficiently. Because of this improvement, you don't have to remember the exact file name you're looking for, which is a huge time-saver.

Read more