I WOULD LIKE TO TURN OFF THE PROFANITY FILTER ON THE MICROSOFT WORD VOICE DICTATION FEATURE

Anonymous
2020-02-16T04:49:28+00:00

I WOULD LIKE TO TURN OFF THE PROFANITY FILTER ON THE MICROSOFT WORD VOICE DICTATION FEATURE

How do I do this??? After hours of google and non-google searching, I can't find any solutions....

...

I understand we live in a puritanical society in the USA where some people find 'swear words' offensive ... but in modern English, in creative thinking and in any kind of free speech and free expression, this aspect of the language to say what things 'really are' is a *necessity*...

... and to censor our ability to use your limited technological voice dictation features without providing the necessary free ability to turn off this antiquated censorship feature or  (for adaptation and avoidance of censorship)is, shall we say..., living in the dark ages?

Is that what Microsoft represents??

Living in the dark ages????

Is Microsoft about to be replaced by a company that understands that we don't want to be censored?

Are we living in the equivalent of a Communist-controlled country now where the government decides what is OK for us to say in the privacy of our own homes??

****************

If trying to send people back to the dark ages, unable to express their ideas freely was NOT

the intention of this vagrant censorship by the Microsoft powers that be,...

... then please provide a way to turn off this VERY antiquated and outdated feature of censoring our ability to use our voices to express our opinions.... without them being obliterated by a series of nonsensical stars in a row ***************** such as f***, sh**, mother-f*******, as-******,  ... **** ....

********************

.... since many of us have had to  resort to making soundalike words which convey the same idea...

Microsoft, please stop censoring your users and join the rest of us in 2020 who still believe in free speech ....

To prove my point, I'm dictating this next paragraph on my Samsung Android phone using google voice dictation, while the censored part of this post above was created using the Microsoft Word voice dictation software) 

And as you'll see, at least Google voice dictation allows you to turn off the **** profanity sensors... So if I want to say words like ****, ****, ****, God damn, etc, Google believes that I'm enough of an adult to determine that I actually want to have those words show up in what I'm dictating.

(so much for that little experiment, as soon as I went to post this edited comment in Microsoft, the words that Google allowed me to freely dictate on my phone once again got censored in  this Microsoft post). 

How long do you think it will be before Google comes up with software to replace Microsoft Office? So you might want to rethink your strategy to censor free-thinking people or you may very well find yourself soon replaced by a company who still believes in free speech.

Sincerely, a free thinking (still) citizen.

ps. We'll see if the Microsoft Artificial intelligence (AI) robots allow this to get posted at all...

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2021-01-14T01:34:13+00:00

Great news after a bit of radio silence that within the settings of the new dictation floatie, a toggle to turn off the profanity filter is available in Insiders Fast for Desktop Word and will be rolling out in the next 1-2 months there as well as show up in the web and mobile versions of dictation very soon!

Check out more here at the Insiders post that came out on January 8th! Dictation in Word and Outlook just got better (office.com) 

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Anonymous
2023-01-20T09:30:48+00:00

That is exactly my point, MVPs get preference over consumer customers. No response to a 14 page thread is bad enough but no response to any customer about a broken function is just bad customer service in general.

I have met some good MVPs and I have met some bad ones, including one that walk all over and doxx other prospective candidates so they can get a leg up or even gain employment with Microsoft. So because of those negative personal experiences I've had with MVPs and Microsoft employees might I add, it's very hard for me to respect the MVP program at all.

I'm an Aussie and you may well know that profanity is part of our culture and playful banter. Microsoft a company that is based out of the USA where Freedom of Speech is the First Amendment which also extends to basic international human rights as part of freedom of expression.

Microsoft does a very good job at censoring objective feedback from the public that may paint any of their half-baked products in a negative light.

This feedback is from personal experience with my interactions with Microsoft and various volunteers and dismissing my experience in your words as "absolutely not true" is just an example of the narrative that Microsoft encourage as part of saving face rather than just helping consumers get the message through to fixing the issues that have been reported about their products.

Don't get me wrong I'm more than happy to advocate for the products they get right. However, it is 100% frustrating when regression bugs like this come back and it takes an unacceptable amount of time

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Jay Freedman 208.2K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
2021-12-10T20:19:25+00:00

It's in the box that appears when you click the Dictate button in desktop Word or Word Online. Somewhere along the update trail, the "Profanity filter" option has changed to "Filter sensitive phrases", but the function is the same.

The desktop version's settings look like this:

Image

while Word Online's settings look like this:

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Suzanne S Barnhill 279.1K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
2021-01-14T13:55:00+00:00

Your original reply was posted, and Emily has responded to it.

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Suzanne S Barnhill 279.1K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
2023-01-20T12:59:13+00:00

This is a very long thread, with some insanely long posts, so I'm not going to try to reread all of it, but my recollection is that at some point there have been some posts from Microsoft employees in the thread. These include the post by Emily Tran that is marked as an answer.

I will escalate the thread again to perhaps get more traction, but if turning the filter off is not working for you, then I don't know what else to suggest.

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  1. Anonymous
    2023-04-19T20:56:50+00:00

    That sounds like great news. I realize you say it's not in place yet, but I'm wondering if I'm even looking in the right place for where the image above will be. Below is what I see for dictation settings specific to Word. And below that is what I see for Windows+H which allows me to dictate all over Windows. Neither look like what you posted. Is that perhaps the look for online Word and my desktop version will look different?

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