I've gone from telephones connected by a wire to the wall and sharing the same number with strangers to every person in the household having their own phone and number that goes with them everywhere and plays music and TV on demand! (I thought my turquoise transistor radio was cool.)īack to dictating: We've gone from someone speaking into a microphone to record and then someone listening to that recording to transcribe what they heard into written words to: "Computer, do my work." How to dictate and transcribe at the same timeīefore we go any further, we need to define a few terms. My grandmother went from horse-drawn wagons to men traveling to the moon. Why do I tell you this? Because at no time during those early years did I imagine the advances I've seen. SEE: 5 transcription apps to make your work life easier (TechRepublic) I offered to enter the data, hit Calc, and deliver the reports. It was a bit of a spaghetti-junction mess. Employees would enter their data, hit Calc, leave, and come back later. They purchased only one for the entire firm of 150. One of my first employers purchased a desktop computer-you had to load DOS, then load software, and then load your program-for a bit over $5,000.
However, I think training in music is a lot like the computer sciences that are studied today (those courses didn't even exist when I was in college). I was a music major and woefully unprepared for the technical age that was coming. My early years with technologyĪt this point, I want to share a bit about my past with technology so you can understand why I find this feature so exciting. Dictate is available in the desktop version a more powerful feature, Transcribe, is available in the web version. There's no demonstration file you won't need one.
I'm using Microsoft 365 on a Windows 10 64-bit system, but you can use older versions. In a subsequent article, I'll show you how to use the web version. We'll discuss what versions do what for you and then learn how to use Dictate in the desktop version. The purpose of this article is to introduce you to the difference between Word desktop and web-the web version has more functionality at this time. SEE: 60 Excel tips every user should master (TechRepublic) It's easy, but it's new, so many of you might not know about it. In this article, I'll show you how easy it is to use Microsoft Word's dictation feature in the desktop version, which became available in August 2020.
Never did I imagine that someday I would simply speak, and computer software would instantly transcribe my words for me.
It took two people-two! I know that vision exposes my age: I've seen technology change so much in my lifetime. The art of dictation and transcription used to draw up images of someone recording a message and then a second person wearing earphones and pressing a foot pedal to control a recording device, while turning the recorded word from the first person into a typed document. Windows 11: Tips on installation, security and more (free PDF).