Deciphering and re-writing notes from an interview, meeting, or informal discussion takes time and energy most of us just don't have these days. Enter Transcribe in Word: a new service for Microsoft 365 subscribers.
Teased in October and available now on the web, Office makes it easy to convert speech—recorded directly or uploaded as an audio file—into shareable text. Running the Azure Speech Services AI platform, users can explore, edit, and move snippets of conversation or the full dialog without ever leaving Word. Simply select Dictate > Transcribe > Start recording; when finished, tap "Save and transcribe now." Text is automatically separated by speaker, and can be played through in its entirety or navigated via timestamp; click the pencil icon to edit individual sound bites.
"Your transcript will appear alongside the Word document, along with the recording, which enables you to leverage your transcript to create great content in the way that is best for you," Dan Parish, project manager for Microsoft's Natural User Interface & Incubation, wrote in a blog announcement.
(Image via Microsoft)
"Say you want to pull the perfect quote from an interview to support the main point of your story—just click the plus icon on any line of the transcript and voila, the exact quote is inserted," he continued. "Want to send the entire transcript to your colleague? Simply click 'add all to document' and your full transcript will be laid out in Word."
But not everyone uses the same tools for the same job. Microsoft allows users to upload audio or video recorded elsewhere—on a phone, via one of the countless virtual conferencing apps—for transcription. The software supports .MP3, .WAV, .M4A, and .MP4 files.
Microsoft 365 subscribers have unlimited access to the free record-and-transcribe service. There is, however, a five-hour limit per month on uploads, each of which can not exceed 200MB. A mobile Office version is expected by the end of this year.
"Transcribe in Word enables you to stay focused on your conversation in the moment, saves you valuable time and energy by transcribing it for you, and is integrated into Word so you can focus on the message of your document and not fuss around with different windows or applications," according to Parish, who also tipped added voice dictation commands on desktop and mobile.
Further Reading
- What Is Microsoft 365?
- Microsoft's All-In-One Office Mobile App Now Available for Everyone
- Office 365 ProPlus Will Switch Chrome's Default Search to Bing
- Adobe Integrates Creative Cloud With Microsoft Office
- More in Office Suites