Can the Read Aloud function be customized, specifically to ignore certain content, e.g. EndNote citations?

Question

I recently discovered this relatively new function and have enjoyed it immensely thus far. My biggest and only issue with it currently is that it speaks the citations out loud, even those embedded with EndNote. I work in the research field which requires writing with citations and this dampens the utility of this amazing tool.

It seems like a major oversite to not allow for some sort of customization for text to skip over, esp. citations.

Is there a workaround or any chance this will get implemented in the near future?

Answer 1

Hi jmgreenb420,

Thank you for querying in this forum.

According to your description, it seems that you are using Read Aloud in Word and it works fine, however, you found that it not allow for some customization to skip, and it read even embedded with EndNote.

May I know if my understanding is right? If so, we have tested it on our side, we just inserted citation in Word, if we select the whole document, it will read the whole document within citation.

So generally, if you select the part contains citation, it will read out all the content. We’re afraid that there is no out of box way to skip over it automatically.

We’re sorry that it doesn’t meet your requirement, we do understand the inconvenience caused and apologize for it. The only possible way we can think of it to not select customized text.

To address your concern, we’d suggest you kindly vote this UserVoice: Include option to skip brackets when reading aloud or you can go to Word UserVoice to post your feedback. This is the best platform to let us hear from you and make our products and services better for you and others.

If the scenario above is not consistent with yours, you can also post back and we will try our best to help you.

Your understanding and patience will be highly appreciated.

Best Regards,

Sukie