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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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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.
I like the "valley girl" description some people have mentioned. We'll I've got her and she needs to go away. I like the inflection where she seems to understand sentences with question marks, but the breathy excited parts are over the top. It's distracting from my proof reading.
Laura,
I have Windows version Windows 11 Version 23H2. I believe that's the most recent. And Microsoft 365. In using Read Aloud, I only can access a female or male voice. The female voice is like that described in earlier responses to this question - a valley girl dramatic voice. I don't like it. I, too, write short stories and working on a novel - this voice is very annoying.
I don't believe I have any version now on Read Aloud that accesses Zira, Mark and David. I use Narrator which is an extension on Word. It has Zira's voice - the one I prefer along with many other options.
I'm hoping that Microsoft gets this updated in the capacity that everyone would prefer. It seems like it would be easy to add more voices to the Read Aloud than just a male and a female voice. I reported to Microsoft quite a few months back.
Teresa
What he said!!!!!!!! Couldn't have worded it better!
The limited (1)male and (1) female voice in my outlook read aloud function is VERY annoying. I use this function a lot. I have actually had moments where I copied the words to pdf and had it read aloud there. Microsoft please give us more options!
I've spent a lot more time with it since this thread started because I figured out I can open my Zotero PDFs to Word to use Read Aloud on iOS. I don't notice the valley girl inflection nearly as much anymore, but I think what a lot of people object to is the breathiness more than the misplaced inflection. If you can ignore the lack of context awareness, speeding up the voice a notch removes the breathy feel.