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Hello, I was listening to the Read Aloud voice in Word on iOS and from one instant to the next it went from the smooth and melodic female voice to some new perky young Valley Girl voice that is AWFUL. I thought it might have been unique to iOS but I just tried Read Aloud on my Windows laptop and the female voice there has been replaced by some Valley Girl too! I am an author who uses Word for my novels and I rely on the Read Aloud tool every single day. I can't listen to my books in this perky voice. It's almost overdramatic, like a teacher reading a book to a class of kindergartners. (That's not sarcasm, that's honestly what it sounds like.) The previous voice was neutral but still good at picking up emotion and inflection. I highly doubt ANYONE asked for such a huge change. It's simply not functional. Do I have any option at all for getting the old voice back?
A family of Microsoft word processing software products for creating web, email, and print documents.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
So horrible! I can't listen to my writing either. You'd expect better from Microsoft.
RianeH, you can switch your language preference to English (Canadian) to access that voice on your PC. It’s not bad. Alternatively, I am now using Speechify. It’s an investment for sure (not free or cheap) but their Jessica voice sounds so much like the old MS voice that I’m starting to wonder if Microsoft sold it to them. Shame we have to look further afield but I don’t think Microsoft will be fixing valley girl anytime soon.
With regards to that, the Text-to-speech feature is with your mobile phone. That means, the Read Aloud feature of your Microsoft Word app will rely on the Text-to-speech features of your mobile phone. I suggest, contact your manufacturing support to help us more with it. Please let me know if these information answered the concern and helped us to resolve the issue. Give back to the Community. Help the next person who has this issue by indicating if this reply solved your problem. Click Yes or No below. Kind regards, Kevin
Hi, Kevin. Contacting them to say/ask what? My phone manufacturer has control over whether or not MS makes more than one female voice available on iOS? The MS read aloud tool on Windows 11 doesn’t give more than one option either. At least there, I can change the language to Canadian English to access that voice instead of valley girl. I don’t have that ability on the mobile app. That’s because of manufacturer controls?
(Sincerely asking. Not trying to be argumentative.)
Hello, Michelle
Thank you for reaching out Microsoft Community. My name is Kevin and I'm happy to help you. I do understand your case. I am so sorry that you were not able to get satisfied with the Read Aloud voice in Word from your iOS device. Apparently, we cannot change the available voice over in the app. However, we have the option the adjust the narrator voice.
Here's how we can do it:
Under the "Voices" section, you'll find options to select different voices for Speak Selection and Speak Screen. Speak Selection allows you to have selected text read aloud, while Speak Screen reads the entire screen content. Tap on "Voices" to choose a language and voice. You can download additional voices if needed.
We can also adjust the Speaking rate of the voice over:
Beneath the Voices section, you'll find the Speaking Rate slider. Use this slider to adjust the speed at which the text is spoken aloud.
Once you've adjusted the text-to-speech settings according to your preferences, you can return to Microsoft Word. Open your document and use the Read Aloud feature. The selected voice and speaking rate will now be applied. By adjusting the text-to-speech settings in iOS Accessibility settings, you can customize the voice and speaking rate for the Read Aloud feature in Microsoft Word and other apps that utilize text-to-speech functionality.
Please let me know if this information helped us to answer the concern. Give back to the Community. Help the next person who has this issue by indicating if this reply solved your problem. Click Yes or No below.
Kind regards, Kevin
With regards to that, the Text-to-speech feature is with your mobile phone. That means, the Read Aloud feature of your Microsoft Word app will rely on the Text-to-speech features of your mobile phone. I suggest, contact your manufacturing support to help us more with it.
Please let me know if these information answered the concern and helped us to resolve the issue. Give back to the Community. Help the next person who has this issue by indicating if this reply solved your problem. Click Yes or No below.
Kind regards, Kevin