Using Voice Commands | Tablet PCs for Dummies

Chapter 6 describes using your voice to enter text; that information also works for dictating text with Office products. However, giving voice commands is slightly different, depending on which Office product you’re using.

When it comes to how these applications are enabled to take advantage of Tablet PC speech input, it’s sort of like George Orwell said in Animal Farm: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

First, when you’re using Word, all categories of Voice Commands in the following list are available to you:

Commanding Tablet PC Input Panel
Starting Applications
Switch To
Selection and Correction
Navigation
Uppercase and Lowercase
Editing Operations
Keyboard Simulation
Controlling Speech
Menus and Buttons

In Excel and Access, Selection and Correction, Navigation, and Uppercase and Lowercase voice command categories are not available to you at all.

In addition, the Menus and Buttons category of Speech commands offers a lot of choices; the ones you can actually use vary by application.

Access

With Access, you can use Access-specific voice commands, such as these:

Create Table by Editing Data
Create Table by Using Wizard
Create Tablet in Design View
Forms
Indexes
Lookup
Primary Key
Queries
Reports

Excel

Excel has these Excel-specific commands:

Data
Merge and Center
Currency Style
Percent Style

Word

Word has these useful word-processing commands:

Drawing
Hyperlink
New Ink Comment
Normal View
Outline View
Print Layout View
Professional Report
Save as Web Page
Spelling and Grammar
Tables and Border Toolbar
Track Changes
(And so on . . .)

Viewing the available commands

To see exactly which commands are available within any application, follow these steps:

Open a document in Word, Excel, or Access.
Open the Input Panel by tapping the Input Panel icon on the Windows taskbar.

The Input Panel appears.
If the Speech feature isn’t on, choose ToolsðSpeech in the Input Panel to turn it on.

The Speech area of the Input Panel is displayed, which includes a Dictation button, a Commands button, and a Speech Tools menu.
Tap the Command button to turn voice commands on.

Tip The Speech features are more context-sensitive when this function is on.
Choose Speech ToolsðWhat Can I Say?
Tap to place your cursor in an open document in an application (Word, Excel, or Access).

The What Can I Say dialog box now reflects the available commands for that application (as shown in Figure 10-2).

Figure 10-2: Expand categories of commands by tapping the plus sign next to them.
Now you can look up the command you want to use, tap the Commands button in the Speech area of the Input Panel, speak a command such as “Save” and your computer performs a corresponding action — in this case, it opens the Save dialog box.

(Refer to Chapter 6 for more detailed information about working with Speech commands.)

Remember You have to have your insertion point active in an open document when you speak a command to have it take effect (unless it’s a Windows command, such as Switch To, to move among applications).