Set up the microphone for Windows Voice access 

Transcript:

 

There are some basic but essential commands you need to learn, so you can ask your computer to start listening to your instructions. You'll need these every time you use Voice access. If you haven't enabled Voice access or configured your microphone, do that first by following the steps in the previous video, before you continue.

​

The three microphone states

Voice access has three basic states. It can be 'awake' and ready to follow your commands. 'Asleep' and not listening out for you, or 'turned off' completely. You need to be able to switch between these states using your voice.

​

Waking up the microphone

If Voice access is asleep, you can wake it up by saying "Voice access wake up" or "unmute". The small microphone icon on the Voice access bar will change from gray to blue, along with the word 'Listening'.

 

This indicates that Voice access is actively listening for your instructions.

​

Putting Voice access to sleep

To put Voice access back to sleep, say "Voice access sleep" or "mute". The small microphone icon on the Voice access bar will change from blue to gray and display the words 'Sleep mode'. This indicates that Voice access is no longer listening for your instructions. It's important that you can easily Voice access to sleep when you want to speak without listening to you.

 

This might be when you want to have a conversation or take a phone call.

 

Turning Voice access off

Sometimes you might want to turn Voice access off completely rather than just putting it to sleep. You can only do this when Voice access is awake. Use the command "turn off microphone". The Voice access bar will display a microphone icon with a cross through it, and the words "Microphone off" to indicate that the Voice access has been disabled.

 

Off is different from sleep mode. The microphone is completely off until you manually turn it back on.

​

The three listening modes

When voice success is awake, there are three different ways you can ask it to listen to you. You can switch between these three modes using voice commands.

 

Command mode

'Command mode' means that Voice access will only listen for instructions related to controlling your computer, such as opening an application or starting a new email. In command mode, Voice access won't type anything that you say.

​

Dictation mode

'Dictation mode' means that Voice access will focus on converting your speech to text. It will ignore anything that might be a command. So, for example, if you are in dictate mode and you say the words "open Microsoft Excel" Voice access will convert that speech to text. It won't treat the instruction as a command to open the Microsoft Excel application.

 

Default mode

'Default mode' means that Voice access will listen for both commands and dictation. This means you can control your computer interface and dictate text at the same time without switching between modes. Before you move on, take time to become familiar with these commands. In the next video, we'll learn how to open, close and switch between different applications such as word, Excel, PowerPoint, and so on.

 

Remember, you can watch these videos in any order depending on what you need to learn. Each video focuses on a specific set of commands, so feel free to jump to the topics most relevant to you.