I purchased a current version of Dragon Dictate that is supposed to be compatible with Office 2016. I have not been able to get it to work. As the issue with the older version of Dragon was that there was no visual basic, I checked to ensure that this was installed. It is. I contacted Nuance (for Dragon), the walked me through some things on my computer to correct any errors with the software. I was still not able to use Dragon in Word, but was able to use Dragonpad with no problems. The tech support at Nuance said that there was likely an issue with my download of Office. I contacted Microsoft tech support, was first told that there would be an update for Word in a week, so that I needed to wait for that. When I pushed for further clarification, I was told that other people were complaining about the same issue and that it was an issue with Nuance. When I asked how I could ensure that Office had downloaded correctly, I was told there wasn't a way to do that, so I returned to my original question of how to get Dragon to work in Word. He told me to call Nuance and hung up. I called Microsoft again in an attempt to speak with someone who has at least some commitment to helping me address my concern. When the first Tech person answered and started speaking over me, I asked to speak with a supervisor. I needed to make this request several times. Finally, I was put on hold for 5 minutes, and another Tech person answered. This person also refused to allow me to speak with a supervisor. I have two questions:
1. What do I need to do to get Dragon for Mac 5 to work with Office for Mac 2016/what is the issue that prevents them from working together?
You will see a message warning you that using your Mac’s dictation option the way it’s currently set up will send your spoken text to Apple to be converted. Click Enable Dictation. Dragon NaturallySpeaking is able to access ALL text, including saved text from previous sessions, if you're editing a text box or a word processor that that uses the Microsoft Word processing engine known as “RichEdit.”. Dragon is being a pain in the arse this morning. Trying to dictate into MS Word led to several crashes and loss of data. Switching to Dragon Pad has produced a whole heap of gobbeldegook while trying to get it to capitalise a word. Office 2016 for Mac and Dragon Dictate I purchased a current version of Dragon Dictate that is supposed to be compatible with Office 2016. I have not been able to get it to work. As the issue with the older version of Dragon was that there was no visual basic, I checked to ensure that this was installed.
2. How can I contact someone for support who will actually be responsive to my questions rather than making assumptions about what I will say, feed back canned comments that do not have anything to do with my call, and will help me find out if Office has been properly installed?
One of the features in OS X Mavericks that I was most looking forward to was offline dictation.
Back in OS X Mountain Lion, Apple added the systemwide Dictation tool, similar to Siri in iOS. You pressed a key combination (by default, the Fn key twice) and started talking to your Mac, and it recorded and transcribed what you said. But this feature required an Internet connection and worked for only brief periods of time—about 30 seconds—before your Mac stopped listening to your speech and headed off to Apple’s servers to have your words transcribed.
My biggest complaint about this implementation was that it didn’t give you any feedback about your dictation until your transcribed text returned to your Mac. If something went wrong, you had no idea until you were (a) done speaking and (b) OS X had finished transcribing what you said.
If something went wrong, you had no idea until you were (a) done speaking and (b) OS X had finished transcribing what you said.
OS X transcription 2.0
Dragon Word To Text For Mac Free Download
That’s no longer the case. In OS X Mavericks, you now have the option of downloading a file that supports offline dictation. To set it up, you go to the Dictation & Speech pane in System Preferences and tick the Use Enhanced Dictation box. That causes the file to download. (Note: It’s a big one—785MB.)
Having this transcription-support file on your Mac dramatically improves the functionality of OS X’s built-in Dictation feature. Now, when you press the Fn key twice and start speaking, the words appear on screen as you speak. The feature works anywhere on the Mac that you can enter text, no training or customization necessary. Just press the key and start talking. In fact, it’s how I’m adding this very text.
Overall, I really like the feature. With my Retina MacBook Pro, the two microphones are so good that I can even dictate without first donning a headset microphone (a traditional requirement for dictation). I find myself using it throughout the operating system and in places that I’d never thought of using dictation before, including online forms and annotations to PDF files. It’s great.
But Mac dictation isn’t new to Mavericks. I’ve been dictating to computers for a long time. (When I first started dictating, you … had … to … talk … like … this … leaving … a … space … between … each … word.) My usual tool is Dragon Dictate for Mac. So when I heard that Apple was improving the Dictation tool in OS X, my first question was: How will it compare to Dragon?
When I heard that Apple was improving the Dictation tool in OS X, my first question was: How will it compare to Dragon?
(Note that, while Apple has never stated publicly where it got the technology behind Siri dictation, I strongly suspect it is Nuance, the same company that publishes Dragon Dictate.)
And so I decided to put the two dictation systems to the test. I took a single passage of text and read it aloud to my Mac, first using Mavericks’s built-in Dictation tool and then using Dragon’s. The differences were striking.
Putting them to the test
![Mac Mac](/uploads/1/2/6/2/126205349/548948313.png)
Just using the two products is a different experience. Dictation software doesn’t understand speech the same way humans do. We continually and instantaneously parse the words we hear based on context; that’s how we know the difference between “ice cream” and “I scream.” Computers do much the same thing, but they aren’t as good at it.
What this means is that, in Mavericks’s Dictation system, words appear on the screen as I speak them, but in a disjointed way, as the system tries to figure out what I’m saying. The words themselves and their order change as I get deeper into a sentence; things keep switching around. Sometimes the screen gets so jumpy that it’s distracting. Dragon Dictate doesn’t put words on the screen as fast as Mavericks’s Dictation, but the words it does put up are usually closer to the final transcription than in Dictation.
The real test, however, is accuracy. To assess that, I used both the Mavericks Dictation tool and Dragon Dictate to transcribe a four-paragraph, 268-word passage of text. I ran through the passage three times in Mavericks, to iron out some kinks, and just once in Dragon Dictate. I didn’t use my existing user profile in Dragon Dictate, in an attempt to make the playing field even.
![Text Text](/uploads/1/2/6/2/126205349/958709598.jpg)
The results? Both programs made mistakes. Mavericks Dictation’s errors were more frequent and more ridiculous, however. For instance, when I said “detail,” it transcribed “D tell.” When I said “expository,” it heard “Expo is a Tory.” The program had particular problems with the sentence “Students must be jarred out of this approach.” I spent several minutes trying to get Dictation to transcribe “jarred” and “jar” correctly; each time it transcribed them both as “John.” I also found it odd that Dictation refused to insert a space before opening quotation marks; it failed to do so in every instance of my test.
In the end, Mavericks’s built-in Dictation tool made 28 mistakes.
Dragon Dictate had fewer problems but still made some mistakes of its own. It too tripped on “expository,” but less hilariously than Dictation, writing “expositors” instead. It insisted on transcribing “class scored” as “classic lord.” Overall, it made nine mistakes.
So the final accuracy scores were 96.6 percent for Dragon Dictate and 89.6 percent for Mavericks’s Dictation. Although that difference might seem insubstantial, and although Mavericks still got a very high B, if you were to dictate a passage of 10,000 words, the text would have more than 1000 errors if you used Mavericks’s Dictation tool, versus about a third of that in Dragon Dictate.
The bottom line
This result isn’t so surprising. Dragon Dictate is a paid application with several years’ worth of development effort behind it. Also, Dragon Dictate requires you to spend time training it before it will even work, so it has a much better idea of your voice and the way in which you speak.
Voice To Text
In addition to increased accuracy, Dragon Dictate has the ability to learn words you use often, and nearly always handles proper names better than the Mavericks Dictation tool. Dragon Dictate also has several additional features for controlling the user interface that are simply not available with the Dictation module in Mavericks.
In other words, Dragon Dictate is a fully developed, feature-rich product; Mavericks’s Dictation, not so much. Then again, Dragon Dictate costs $200, while the Mavericks tool is free.
Word For Mac Free
The way I see it, Mavericks’s Dictation tool is like Dragon Dictate Lite. Nevertheless, I’m finding use for both of them. The Mavericks tool’s best feature is the ability to activate it anywhere on my Mac and immediately start dictating; I’m using it in all sorts of unexpected places on my Mac. Dragon Dictate is not as easy to get working in any context, but when you need to dictate long passages of text, its increased accuracy makes it the clear choice.
Another Word For Dragon
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