Voice Access has no personal dictionary function?? How do I add commonly used words?

Question

Voice Access has no personal dictionary function?? How do I add commonly used words?

Anonymous

I recently got a notification that Microsoft Speech Recognition (which I use as a disabled writer who struggles to type even with ergonomic keyboards due to severe pain) is being deprecated in favor of Voice Access. In trying to figure out how to switch I have been unable to locate a dictionary function that would allow me to add words that I dictate regularly, such as names or non-standard words one might find in social vernacular, scientific or medical terminology, fantasy or sci-fi writing, etc. The help documentation only gives options for spelling the words and names out letter by letter, which can be tedious when you have long scientific terms, are trying to dictate nonstandard conversation and terminology, or even just have one person you talk to regularly with a name that has a unique spelling.

Does this function just...not exist? And if so, WHY ARE YOU GETTING RID OF THE TOOL THAT HAS IT IN FAVOR OF THE ONE THAT DOES NOT?

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.

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7 answers

Answer 1

Wow, that is completely infuriating. Without a personal dictionary, the usefulness of the voice access feature is rather limited. Adding vocabulary to the speech recognition feature worked surprisingly well, and I am surprised that this was not implemented for the feature which is supposed to replace speech recognition.

Answer 2

That we have to find things like this as workarounds for a feature that is already present in other programs, and has been for at least a decade at this point, is unacceptable. I ended up reinstalling a copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking from 2012 that has better adaptability than the native windows program that is supposed to be the best Microsoft can offer in 2025.

Quite honestly, we should expect better of them. This and the recent needless AI bloat are absolutely unacceptable. As soon as I can find reliable ways to get a few things to function properly on Linux I'm jumping ship.

Answer 3

That does not match the wording of the message I get every time I start my computer, to quote:

"You will not be able to use Windows Speech Recognition and it will be removed in a future update. We encourage you to use voice access. Launch voice access and continue working."

The message itself:

Answer 4

(I don't work at Microsoft, just a fellow Voice Access user.)

Although they don't have the dictionary feature available yet, temporarily, you can use a workaround by creating voice shortcuts (if you have used Dragon Dictation, this is somewhat comparable to the auto-text feature). Say "Open Voice Shortcuts," and it will open up the menu for this. You can have it insert chunks of text or perform actions based on a trigger voice command. Although this is not quite like a dictionary function (you cannot use it in the middle of a sentence; it must be at the beginning of a Voice Access command) and it would make more sense for paragraphs of text rather than an individual word, it is better than having to spell out a word every time.

Answer 5

Hi Asher,

I'm Sumit, here to answer your query at the Microsoft Community.

Yes, dictionary in Voice access is not available as of yet. I would like yo let you know that Speech Recognition feature isn't getting removed from Windows, just it will not be developed. You cna continue using that.

Can you take a moment and let Microsoft know abour your suggestion Re:Dictionary?

https://aka.ms/WindowsFeedbackApp

Hope that helps, and rely on us for any further inquiries. All the best.

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Voice Access has no personal dictionary function?? How do I add commonly used words?

7 answers