Microsoft has introduced a new feature for Word that is expected to make note-taking faster and easier than ever for business and personal users. According to a Microsoft blog post, the popular word processor will now allow users to transcribe audio in real time and generate transcripts from existing recordings (including .mp3, .wav, .m4a, and .mp4). The new addition, called Transcribe to Word, generates interactive transcripts that sit in the sidebar next to the document, ready to be searched, edited, or checked out. Word can also differentiate the voices of multiple speakers, which means transcripts are easy to read and digest. Transcribe is available immediately to all Microsoft 365 subscribers through the Microsoft Word web client, but is only compatible with Edge and Google Chrome web browsers.
Microsoft Word update
With the addition of the new transcription feature, Word will now compete with popular text-to-speech offerings such as Nuance Dragon and Speechmatics, which are used for writing documents using only voice and other high-performance transcription tasks. "Whether you're a journalist conducting interviews, a researcher recording focus group sessions, or an online entrepreneur recording informal discussions, you want to be able to focus on the people you're talking to without worrying about taking notes." Microsoft wrote. “Now you can record your conversations directly in Word for the web and have them transcribed automatically. After your conversations, you can review parts of the recording by playing back the time-stamped audio, and you can even edit the transcript if there are any issues. "In addition to saving time for anyone who needs to transcribe a long recording, including journalists like us, the new feature could also save the lives of people who have a condition that hinders their ability to write effectively. Users will also be able to enjoy recordings and unlimited audio transcriptions, as long as individual recordings do not exceed five hours or 200 MB.Microsoft has confirmed that the new transcription feature will be coming to Microsoft Word for mobile by the end of the year and that support is being offered for a range of widest range of languages (beyond English).