XL2002: Dictated Commands Are Not Executed Correctly and May Cause Unrecognized Characters to Be Displayed

When you use Speech Recognition to dictate a phrase that ends in a command, Excel may not preform the command as you expect.

• When you dictate a numeric entry followed by the command "Enter," the dictation is not displayed and the command is not executed in Excel as you expect.
• When you dictate a phrase followed by the command "New line," the spoken phrase is displayed in your worksheet, but the command "New Line" is not executed and an unrecognized character (a small square) appears after the phrase.
• When you dictate a phrase followed by an unrecognized command, such as "New Paragraph," the spoken phrase is not displayed in your worksheet, and two unrecognized characters (small squares) appear in the active cell.

You expect the phrase or number to be displayed in the selected cell, and you expect the spoken command to be executed.

-OR-

You expect the unrecognized command to be ignored, and you expect that no unrecognized characters appear in your worksheet.

To work around this issue, be sure to pause momentarily between the dictated number or phrase and the spoken command.

For numeric entries, follow these steps:

1. Select the cell in which you want to dictate.
2. Dictate the numeric entry using "Force Num" to distinguish that it should be interpreted as a number. For example, say "Force Num Twenty-Two".
3. Pause for a moment.
4. Say "Enter".

Notice that the word "Enter" is correctly recognized as a command. The active cell is moved down or right.


For non-numeric entries, follow these steps:

1. Click to select the cell in which you want to dictate.
2. Dictate the phrase.
   
   For example, say "Microsoft Excel".
3. Pause for a moment.
4. Say "New Line".

Notice that "New Line" is recognized as a command to move the insertion point to a new line in your Excel worksheet.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

Speech Recognition is a feature in Microsoft Office XP that allows you to dictate text into Microsoft Office XP programs. With Speech Recognition, you can use your voice to select menu, toolbar, and dialog box items.

For more information about Speech Recognition, click Microsoft Excel Help on the Help menu, type Speech in the Office Assistant or the Answer Wizard, and then click Search to view the topic.