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Every time I try to use the "Read Aloud" function, I get this exact error:
"To choose what voice you hear while using Read Aloud, sign in with your Microsoft account."
It worked fine until two weeks ago (the last time I used it) and I have tried every single thing in every thread: I reinstalled the apps, logged out and in, "repair online", reinstalled the english langague packs on my computer, used safe mode, turned on the optional experience, rebooted my pc, and it still doesn't work. I am out of options.
Last time, it was apparently due to a windows update, and yesterday I did update my windows, but I don't see anyone talking about it, so I don't know, please help.
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.
Mine is up and running!!!! 8:30 PM EDT
Evidently today's update set it back in order.
After nearly 5 days of frustration, thank you MS for the fix.
I was on a chat with Microsoft support for about an hour regarding this issue. I informed the individual up front that I tried all the usual fixes in all the threads, just like you mentioned, yet they insisted I try them all again. When none of them worked, they simply dropped off of the chat without a word. Super unprofessional and frustrating. Especially since this is a feature that I use daily. I hate when this bug crops up. Hopefully they fix it soon. But I am glad to confirm that it is indeed the bug, and not simply me.
Hi doveOO and All,
Currently, there have many different users are experiencing the issue that when they try to use the Read Aloud Function in Word desktop application, it will pop the message saying, "To choose what voice you hear while using Read Aloud, sign in with your Microsoft account.", which prevented users from using the Read Aloud function as usual.
Also, from my search across the community, the sameissue is currently happening for both Microsoft 365 Business/Education and also Home/Personal subscription with a work/account or a Microsoft personal account, which proves the popping message doesn't really make the sense. In this situation, as it can highly possibly be a potential bug from Word product side, my suggestion for all affected users is to report this inconvenience and unsatisfied user experience directly to the Word development team and so the product engineers can get informed of how this temporary Read Aloud issue has caused the low work-efficiency for many end users **** and recover back the available function AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.
From admin users, the most efficient way is to raise a free M365 support ticket where product engineers there will offer escalated support resources for this and report this directly to the internal channel ASAP: Get support - Microsoft 365 admin | Microsoft Learn****
And for end users, submit direct feedbackvia the in-app channel: How do I give feedback on Microsoft 365? - Microsoft Support
Please understand that as a community moderator here, I have limited troubleshooting suggestions offer here to resolve such potential bug from product backend. But I will keep monitor from the Microsoft Service Incident Center and if I receive any bugfix notifications on our side, I'll share with you here as soon as I can! I appreciate your time and patience on checking this reply. Hope you stay well and safe!
Sincerely,
Mia | Microsoft Community Moderator
Same here. It appears Microsoft doesn't want to address this.
It's not Copilot. I've removed it and reinstalled. It's the same regardless. Feel free to remove it from your computer. I, also, don't like it when MS forces programs down my throat. Especially when it's just a free trial and I'd need to pay for credits to keep using it.
I'm almost positive someone did a "scream test."
A scream test, for those not involved in IT, is when someone who shouldn't be in charge asks why a service or server is running when it doesn't "seem" to be doing anything. And then they shut if off.
Edit: I forgot to mention where the scream comes in. They shut it off and just wait for people to start screaming that their stuff doesn't work anymore. Then they say, "oops, guess we needed that." and go turn it back on.
I think there's authentication server that Office (Word) checks in with after each update to make sure they're subscribed and still should have access to certain 'features' like Natural-sounding voices (that's the feature by the way. It works with Read Aloud, but that's the feature/service that isn't able to check back in and pops up the error that you aren't signed in)
So, to me, it makes sense someone turned off something they shouldn't have.
I've rolled back and tried different versions (4 different update versions) and then went WAAAAAAY back, and I'm still getting the error for each of these updates. Which leads me to believe it's on their end, not ours (which means there's nothing we can do to fix the issue). Again, sounds like an authentication server or service that got switched off.
Also, I've got ASD and I'm a writer who uses Read Aloud with Natural-sounding voices as part of my process. I can't stress enough how disruptive this has been for me. I wasn't able to write yesterday and today, I might have to resort to using Edge to read my words. Edge has the same feature, and it's still working for me. Again, supporting my hypothesis that they didn't break the program on our end, it's just a stupid authentication issue on their end.