MS Word Read Aloud voice changes tone

Anonymous
2024-03-20T11:04:45+00:00

I'm using the Read Aloud feature, and the "female" voice changed its tone when it hit this one paragraph. I don't think there's anything special about the text, but the voice changed to sound emotionally elated. Why is it doing this, when I never hear it use emotion anywhere else?

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  1. Anonymous
    2024-03-31T16:06:01+00:00

    Yes, I remember the named voices too, and used Zira at times as well. I just want the old Female voice back. She was so natural and didn't assault us with emotional garbage that doesn't fit the text.

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-03-31T12:55:10+00:00

    This solution worked for me, but I want a real solution. The change to Female and Male is simply not acceptable. I need to be able to chose from the voices I have installed and there is no justification for MS to change the intonation of the voice at will. Some of us use it for work and have no use for an emotional voice to read a research paper.

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-03-28T14:31:24+00:00

    If you've been doing this a while (like me) you may remember the voices that came before the "female" and "male" update. The workaround I'm using isn't ideal, but is better than Valley Girl, in my opinion. If you disconnect Word from the internet, it can't find the new voices, so it uses the old ones. Before the previous update, I used Zira, so I'm back to using her. It's a little jarring, but she worked for me for years, so I'm adjusting. Just an idea.

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  4. Suzanne S Barnhill 279.2K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2024-03-28T00:56:12+00:00

    Be sure to submit feedback through Help | Feedback.

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  5. Anonymous
    2024-03-27T19:10:44+00:00

    I am also an author who uses Word's Read Aloud option on a daily basis. The NEW female voice is awful and distracting! She sounds like someone reading a bad, breathy romance novel. It is wholly inappropriate in my mystery novel. Can I please have the old female voice back, or at least give us an option between the two?

    When this first happened to me, it was, as others have said, suddenly in a new paragraph or when it would hit dialogue quotation marks. Now, it is all the time. I hate it.

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