The page labelled Listen to your Word documents with Read Aloud only tells you to click the Read Aloud button. Microsoft’s instructions are, to put it politely, minimal. There’s a lot that’s not properly documented about Read Aloud in Word. Read Aloud is the better choice, if available in Word 365 or Word 2019. See Hear a document with Speak in Word 2016, 20 Which to choose? Speak still exists in Word 365 and Word 2019, if you prefer to use it, add it to the Quick Access Toolbar. While their main job is the same, reading text aloud, the underlying systems are quite different, and the settings separate. Tips and advice which confuse the two or try to merge them into a single feature. There’s a lot of confusion about Read Aloud vs Speak. Speak uses the older, less refined ‘Text to Speech’ features available in the Control Panel | Speech Recognition area. Read Aloud uses the enhanced Narrator and Accessibility technology in Windows 10, the settings for that are at Windows 10 Settings | Ease of Access | Narrator. There’s also a shortcut Ctrl + Alt + Spacebar to start/stop reading. You’re not limited to just reading a selection.Ĭlicking the Read Aloud button a second time will stop/pause the voice. Read Aloud will start reading from the current cursor or selection. In short, look for little speaker icons on some menus. Microsoft has sprinkled Read Aloud options all through Word 365 as part of a drive to improve Accessibility options in Office. ‘Read Aloud’ is promoted to the Review tab (instead of being hidden away like Speak) What’s different aside from the name and a fresh round of Microsoft hype?

This article explains how to use Read Aloud, the different locations for settings, troubles that can arise and a truly dreadful error message. The official documentation for Read Aloud is awful. Windows has the underlying ‘Narrate’ technology that lets Word talk. The voice selection and settings in Windows are very different. Read Aloud has more controls than the older Speak feature and it appears in more places within Word. It’s available in Word 365 and Word 2019. Read Aloud is the newer and better form of the old Speak feature from Word 2016-2010.