To use Dictation, you need internet connection. Please make sure your connection is working.

Hi Lee,

Thank you for querying in this forum. We understand the inconvenience caused and apologize for it. And we will try our best to help you.

According to your description, it seems that you cannot use Dictate feature in Office applications. And you encountered an error message. At the same time, you have searched a lot and you have tried the suggestions in the thread you provided to check network connection, firewall, Office network settings, and they work well.

May I know if my understanding is right? If so, we have tested it on our side and we cannot reproduce the same situation as yours. We can use this feature without any problem.

Given this situation, we have also searched a lot and we may find any related article to mention this error message. However, we still want to give you some suggestions below and hope that will help you:

1. We noticed that you have checked network connection, firewall, Office network settings, and they work well. We’d also suggest you change another Internet connection to check if the same problem will occur. For example, you can use your phone’s connection by opening a hotspot to check if the same problem will occur. This will help you troubleshoot if it is caused by firewall or proxies.
2. I suggest you try online repair to check the result, it may be related to the Office client: Repair an Office application.
3. Please update your Office to the latest version to check if the same problem will occur. You can refer to this article: Update history for Microsoft 365 achieve the latest version of Office.
4. At the same time, we have also searched a lot, and we found a related Group policy, you can refer to the suggestion Gregory for Microsoft provided. For your reference: Disable Office 365 Dictate

If the same problem still persists after trying all suggestions above, to better understand your situation and test it on our side, could you provide the information below?

1. Could you provide the Product Information and version of your Word? You can go to Word > File > Account and provide the full screenshot of Account page.
2. To narrow down this issue is related to Office applications, we’d suggest you go to Word Online to check if the same problem will occur.
3. We also noticed that you mentioned that uses have the same problem, to narrow down this issue is related to Group policy, may I know if all users in your organization have the same problem?
4. Do all Office applications have the same problem?

Best Regards,

Sukie

Hi Sukie

Thank you for your response. On checking the GPO location provided in the link I can confirm they are all set to default 'Not configured'. You advice does offer an interesting insight into the  management mechanism of Dictate.

On further testing with a wider user group I have determined it is a web proxy filter blocking it. I use Forcepoint Web Security. When the endpoint is removed from a computer Dictate works, reapply is and it's blocked again. I have raised a support case with Forcepoint and Whilst I appreciate this is a non-Microsoft product, do you have any insight as to what exceptions maybe required to allow Dictate to bypass web proxies? For the sake of this post this might be useful is anyone else faces a similar issue.

Best regards

Lee

Hi Sukie

Thank you for your response. On checking the GPO location provided in the link I can confirm they are all set to default 'Not configured'. You advice does offer an interesting insight into the  management mechanism of Dictate.

On further testing with a wider user group I have determined it is a web proxy filter blocking it. I use Forcepoint Web Security. When the endpoint is removed from a computer Dictate works, reapply is and it's blocked again. I have raised a support case with Forcepoint and Whilst I appreciate this is a non-Microsoft product, do you have any insight as to what exceptions maybe required to allow Dictate to bypass web proxies? For the sake of this post this might be useful is anyone else faces a similar issue.

Best regards

Lee

Lee, I think this proxy issue has come up before for enterprise and Dictation - can you please send me an email (see profile) so I can try to help resolve this? If it works we can comment back on this forum post regarding how to fix it and think about official documentation.

Lee, I think this proxy issue has come up before for enterprise and Dictation - can you please send me an email (see profile) so I can try to help resolve this? If it works we can comment back on this forum post regarding how to fix it and think about official documentation. 

Hi Emily - email sent as requested.

Answer for the forum post:

If using a web proxy filter for enterprise set-ups and running into issues with Dictation or other services, take a look at: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/enterprise/urls-and-ip-address-ranges

The section for Microsoft 365 Common and Office Online Service Area should include the needed 52.108.0.0/14 IP published but linking the page above in case anything changes.