Random characters appear in Office XP documents or the Internet Explorer address bar after you install Speech Recognition

After you install Microsoft Office XP or other speech-enabled products by using Microsoft's Speech application programming interface (API), random words or characters may be displayed in Office XP documents or in the Internet Explorer Address bar.

This behavior can occur because the speech recognition tool is "listening" to your voice through you computer's microphone and is attempting to recognize what you are saying. This can cause random words or characters to appear in programs that support speech recognition.

To determine whether speech recognition is enabled on a Windows XP, Microsoft Windows 2000, or Microsoft Windows NT-based computer, please see the "More Information" section in the following Knowledge Base article:

To resolve this issue, use either of the following methods, as appropriate to your circumstances:

• Click the Microphone button on the Language bar so that neither Dictation nor Voice Command is displayed.
  
  Note If the Language bar is not displayed on the desktop, follow these steps first:
  1. Open the Regional and Language Options tool in Control Panel.
  2. On the Languages tab, click Details under Text services and input languages.
  3. Select Language Bar, and then click to select the Show the Language bar on the desktop check box.

• Turn off speech recognition. To turn off speech recognition, follow these steps:
  1. Open the Regional and Language Options tool in Control Panel.
  2. On the Languages tab, click Details under Text services and input languages.
  3. Under Installed services, click Speech Recognition, and then click Remove.
  4. Click OK to apply all the changes. You may need to restart your computer.

To restart speech recognition, follow these steps:

1. Right-click the Language bar, and then click Settings.
2. Click Add.
3. Select the language that you want to use under Input Language.
4. Click to select the Speech Recognition check box, and then click OK.

For more information about speech recognition, click the following article numbers to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: