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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.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Try sending requests to Microsoft Customer Feedback <feedbk@microsoft.com> rather than this answer forum. If enough users show an interest, they may put the good voices back out.
I use Read Aloud every day and the male/female option is just terrible. It grates on my nerves! Is there anyway to request they change it back or at least give us the option to change back.
As Jay mentioned I also have 365 and am limited to the 3 robotic voices.
That matches with my research on the Microsoft websites that indicates the new voices are only for the subscription service (Office 365) not the desktop Office versions. Such a shame. Follows along with my theory that Microsoft (and many other companies) are moving to an online subscription presence only. This ensures ongoing revenue while minimizing development and maintenance costs.
The report that I saw probably applied to only Microsoft 365, but if I'm wrong, then the fact that the feature is rolling out gradually might mean that you would get it eventually.