Word Dictate - keeps typing 'what'

Anonymous
2020-01-23T08:42:55+00:00

Hi, I just started using the dictate function in Word and its great. However when I pause for too long it types 'What' and if i'm not careful i miss it and it stays in my text. I have tried several times and there is no background noise and I am not breathing heavy or saying anything? It will often type 'what' also before the dictate function times out and turns off. 

edit - it is now also typing 'hello' and 'heehee'. I think its possessed!! 

The function commands such as hyphen, open parenthesis etc do not work either. comma, full stop do. Also is there a way to lengthen the time out function as I find it too short?

Any suggestions or anyone else having this problem?

Thankyou

H

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2020-06-04T17:16:46+00:00

Thanks @Rohn007 for pointing this out - I have just e-mailed Emily Tran to let her know. She is the person from Microsoft working to fix this.

When we were last in contact she hadn't been able to see the 'hello' problem in action. This might be why.

I think most of us would like to continue using the dictate function - it just needs a bit of perseverance to get there, and collaboration with Microsoft to help them.

Onwards and upwards!

A fix has been deployed to 100% of Dictation users - please let us know if you still see the issue.

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  1. Anonymous
    2020-04-21T16:24:48+00:00

    I am also having the very same issue.  It is truly annoying and makes the feature useless to me.   BTW.  It was not doing this last week when I was simply experimenting with the "dictate" feature.  What changed? 

    BTW #2" It seems to insert the word "hello" when I pause to collect my thoughts.

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  2. Suzanne S Barnhill 279.2K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2020-04-21T16:44:55+00:00

    Have you read the reply marked as an answer? MS is working on the problem.

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-04-21T20:25:22+00:00

    I am also having the very same issue.  It is truly annoying and makes the feature useless to me.   BTW.  It was not doing this last week when I was simply experimenting with the "dictate" feature.  What changed? 

    BTW #2" It seems to insert the word "hello" when I pause to collect my thoughts. 

    Something on the speech-to-text service changed, so sorry for the inconvenience, we are still investigating! In the reply we have a way to send-a-frown with tag #DictationHelloBug to help with the investigation optionally, thank you for reporting it!

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  4. Anonymous
    2020-04-21T21:07:56+00:00

    Many of us have learning disabilities and other characteristics such that a functional dictation system would make life much better. What about blind people? What about people with dyslexia? The usual Cortana user just wants convenience, but for others, a functional dictation system makes a big difference. In my case, I'm autistic and the characteristics of my voice don't work well with Dragon products. MS dictation actually does a decent job, but timer makes the process too clunky.  BTW, I'm using applications running locally on my computer, rather than the MS cloud.

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