Can I use text-to-speech?

Question

Windows XP has built in text-to-speech capability. There is a speech control panel. Is there any way to use it to read a document if I don't have Microsoft Office?

There is nothing to try. My word processor programs do not have a speech option and the control panel only lets you hear what it sounds like.

Answer 1

Hi.

Yes. I don't think you need Microsoft Office. Here's a good article:

http://www.practicalpc.co.uk/computing/windows/txt2speech.htm

"Narrator is designed to work with Internet Explorer, Notepad, WordPad, the Control Panel and the Desktop. It may work with other programs but this isn’t guaranteed.

Narrator has several options controlling how much it tells you about.

+You can have new windows, menus or shortcuts read aloud.

+You can have every typed character read aloud

+You can set the mouse pointer to follow the active item on the screen

Now, you may by now be thinking ‘this sounds useful’. Unfortunately, it only seems to read editable text. If you’ve opened a document in WordPad, this is fine; Narrator will happily read the contents aloud. If you have opened up the text of a document or perhaps even an eBook then all is well. However, if you are using it to browse web sites, you hit a problem. Narrator will read out the menu options and any editable areas such as input fields. What it won’t read is the content of any normal web page as these are by definition read-only. A slight problem!"

-Leon S

p.s. The links I included have instructions on setup and usage. Let me know if you experience problems getting it to work.

Which office software are you using? Are you using OpenOffice.org? It's FREE! And it is compatible with ALL Microsoft Office file formats. I know that's another story but it could be helpful if receive a MS Office document from someone in the future.

Answer 2

Pushing the windows logo key (its marked start on my keyboard, between the left Ctrl and Alt buttons) +U brings up the utility manager.

Scroll down once to Narrator is not running.
Click Start
Open your document and push +Ctrl +Shift +Spacebar to make it start reading from the cursor.

Interesting enough, it doesn't seem to be able to read the question on the answer page. It only reads the sections that can be reached by pushing the Tab button.

Answer 3

Why don't you try it - It should work with any text. Not just Microsoft office.