Speak is a built-in feature of Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, and OneNote. You can use Speak to have text read aloud in the language of your version of Office.
Text-to-speech (TTS) is the ability of your computer to play back written text as spoken words. Depending upon your configuration and installed TTS engines, you can hear most text that appears on your screen in Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, and OneNote. For example, if you're using the English version of Office, the English TTS engine is automatically installed. To use text-to-speech in different languages, see Using the Speak feature with Multilingual TTS.
To learn how to configure Excel for text-to-speech, see Converting text to speech in Excel.
Add Speak to the Quick Access Toolbar
You can add the Speak command to your Quick Access Toolbar by doing the following in Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, and OneNote:
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Next to the Quick Access Toolbar, selectÂ
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Select More Commands.
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In the Choose commands from list, select All Commands.
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Scroll down to the Speak command, choose it, and then select Add.
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Select OK.
Use Speak to read text aloud
Once the Speak command is added to your Quick Access Toolbar, select a single words or a block of text read to read aloud and then choose the Speak icon on the Quick Access Toolbar.
Learn more
Listen to your Word documents with Read Aloud
Listen to your Outlook email messages with Read Aloud
Converting text to speech in Excel
Dictate text using Speech Recognition
