Stop dictate from turning off in Word 365

If someone is going to log a ticket with support, I feel it is important to point at that this is a feature originally introduced as an accessibility feature for people who cannot easily use their keyboards.  So far, all the replies I've read seem to be from people using Dictate more-or-less for convenience. That includes me, BTW.

Let's imagine for a second how intensely frustrating this must be for someone who can't press a 3-key shortcut to turn it back on, or continuously click their mouse, or whatever.

Has anyone tried shifting this from the Community - where we all seem to be talking to each other about something that is being ignored by Microsoft - to raising a ticket with the Help people?  I need this functionality and I don't mind them fixing things, but I do mind being ignored over a rather important bit of kit.

I have been using dictate feature for a while now. It was finally working and would continue to accept input and type out for long periods of time. 15 to 20 minutes was not a problem. This week, it now stops after one minute. Every single time. I've timed it.

I've been doing some research and interestingly enough Google's speech to text limits audio to one minute. Is Microsoft Word Dictate now using Google's speech to text somehow and it's limited to one minute at a time? This is extremely annoying to have to restart the microphone every minute because it doesn't even show that's it's not listening anymore. It just stops typing at one minute.

I'm afraid the ALT and Windows key options didn't fare any better than the Word dictation icon - they switched off after a few seconds.

I have found the same problem too. At times dictation will also stop mid-sentence, and this is infuriating. I've given up using the dictate application within Word, but have now activated speech recognition in Windows and use that functionality in Word. Simply activate by pressing the Windows icon + H and the feature turns on. It's not perfect but it's definitely better that the dictate function within Word.

Hope this helps.

Hopefully Microsoft will sort this out because it's potentially a great feature!