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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?
A family of Microsoft word processing software products for creating web, email, and print documents.
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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.
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.
At least I'm not the only one! Yeah, I loved the new "Male" and "Female" voices vs. the robotic trio of before. I'm a teacher, and I use read-aloud in Word to record audio versions of notes and assignment directions for my struggling readers. So, yeah, I got recordings of those voices just in case somebody thinks they're going crazy lol. Microsoft need to stop trippin' with this and bring them back! 😠
At least I'm not the only one! Yeah, I loved the new "Male" and "Female" voices vs. the robotic trio of before. I'm a teacher, and I use read-aloud in Word to record audio versions of notes and assignment directions for my struggling readers. So, yeah, I got recordings of those voices just in case somebody thinks they're going crazy lol. Microsoft need to stop trippin' with this and bring them back! 😠
So mine have since come back, mysteriously (and glad).
Yes, mine came back too but only on my standalone. My laptop still has the crappy ones for some strange reason. I have installed all updated but to no avail.