Read Aloud Voices in WORD (they disappeared)

Anonymous
2021-11-30T00:39:13+00:00

After upgrading my laptop to Windows 11, I tried Read Aloud in Word. To my surprise there were several voice options that were not there when I was using Windows 10. Then, after a week of using it to proofread my manuscript, I rebooted my laptop (something I do regularly to ensure updates) and the Read Aloud was ****. I tried to change back to the good voice and there were only the standard three voices (David, Zira, Mark). I worked with Microsoft support, who reinstall my Office 19 twice before finally saying there were only the three voices and I had to live with it.

Was I in some weird twilight zone for a week and not in the real world? What happened to my good Read Aloud voice? and how can I get it back?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2022-02-05T23:50:23+00:00

    Yes! The new "male" and "female" voices were far better, just introduced late 2021 as AI-powered, as far as I know. They had way more natural speech and better pronunciation than the built-in Windows "named" voices. This week, they disappeared on me and now just David, Zira, and Mark show up, which sound like Sound Blaster voices from the 1990s.

    I hope they just allow a choice. Some people here like the robotic voices. But for everyone else allow us to choose the modern "smart" voices that work far better.

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-02-02T22:06:19+00:00

    Same thing happened here. Male & female voices were fantastic for as long as they lasted. Robots Mark & company came back and they sound awful. Please bring back the male and female voice option. Word is a great program, but this back and forth is frustrating and does not inspire trust.

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-02-02T21:17:40+00:00

    After windows 11 was installed, the text to voice voices in the uk changed to "male" and "female" and were brilliant. Now it has changed back to those three **** voices which are as far as being smooth as it can get. The only way to change the voice from these three, as far as I can tell, is to change the language. This also changes the spelling opperation. Why can't I just have those two male and female options back!!! hey worked. These others are awful.

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-02-02T14:20:48+00:00

    I've been using the 'Female' voice in word since at least the beginning of Nov 2021. There's no way they didn't know they were out in the wild.

    Microsoft, please, just put'em back. You can keep moving stuff around in the Microsoft365 admin centers and confusing us on where to go on a daily basis when we try to access one of the 6 different Exchange Admin Centers, but give us back our voices in word.

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-02-01T18:49:02+00:00

    This is exactly what happened to me a couple of months ago. As can be seen by Microsoft's reply above, they are working on it and will send out an update when they are ready. My guess is they erroneously put out the updated voices and then pulled them back when they realized it. And of course, nobody will even acknowledge that the good voices were out in the wild for some period of time. I even had one tech on the Microsoft website tell me I was mistaken when I thought I heard better voices and even denied that I saw different voice options in the dropdown list.

    Why lie about it? Someday we will get better voices--but maybe Microsoft won't be the ones who provide them.

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