Word Dictate - keeps typing 'what'

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

To help figure out the underlying issue, we'd like to ask volunteers who have this issue to report it via Send a Frown via the app they are using (Word, Outlook, other) with the tag #DictationHelloBug and if possible, check the box to leave an email address for follow-up questions. 

5/19 Update: Thank you to all the submissions so far! We will be updating this thread and emailing those who left their email once we have an expected fix, which is in progress.

I am marking this as the answer for now so that it will rise to the top and be seen by others who visit this thread.

Silence Timeout for Dictation

We've captured that various folks here are requesting a longer timeout. Two remedies may be

1. Potentially making the timeout longer, right now it should be about 20 seconds.

2. Having keyboard shortcuts to toggle Dictate on and off. Refer to the help articles for coverage as shortcuts are just coming soon. In Word for the Web, the shortcut ALT + ` (backquote) is rolling out now.

Why not just make it configurable? This used to be a common practise for many of the big software companies, and Microsoft more than most - give the user a choice. Everyone seems to have gotten away from this and I don't understand why.

Very few things you're likely to run into while working on something like Word are one-size-fits-all and there seems to nowadays be this bizarre allergy to recognizing that; the approach in vogue now is apparently to try to do everything automatically and give the user the bare minimum of ability to configure anything themselves, none at all if that can be managed. (In Windows and Office, most of the old control panels and such turn out to still be there, but they've been made as much of a pain in the **** as possible to get to; the number of clicks needed to do a lot of what used to be considered basic configuration tasks has at least doubled. In some cases a search is the only way I've found to get to them, and the keywords needed aren't always intuitive.) I despair of it.

Anyway, that tangent aside, why not give the user a few options, maybe ranging from 10 to 120 seconds, and work that into the setup wizard so hopefully everyone is happy?

Office Dictation - Punctuation Supported List

Dictation (through the Dictate button on the Home Tab) in Office has the punctuation supported listed in each article here Dictate in Office 365. So, if you are looking for Word , please see that page. We are actively looking to extend support in all languages, so please send your feedback for what you would like to be able to see added at any time. 

One comment on this, right now there doesn't seem to be any way to start or stop bullets and numbering via dictation. It's a minor point until the "hello" thing is fixed as that's the main thing making me not want to use dictation, but it would be really useful for my purposes at least if I could start and end bulleted lists without the keyboard and mouse. I found results on Google suggesting that saying "Make that bullet style" or "format that bullet style" do this in various programs including Outlook and Powerpoint, but they don't work in Word - it just types out the words "make that bullet style" etc. So while you're looking at this I'm going to suggest adding a command along the lines of "bullet point" or "start/stop bullets".

Great considerations! 

1. The reason we don't have a generous timeout now is that silence still counts as usage of the service we pay for to deliver speech-to-text results. An extra 120 seconds for everyone across the board could add up. However, this feedback about it being too short has been noted and is on our list of things to address which make the experience a pain as you mentioned and we are looking into solutions that will not create a lot of extra costs and allow folks to pause and think before resuming :) 
2. Great suggestion! Bullet support is coming and also on the top of our list - feel free to send over any suggestions you have for future voice commands. 

Adding on here we are using some of the audio samples volunteers sent from this thread (thank you!) to work on the issue internally still and I will update the thread once we have a fix deployed.