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Microsoft announces several new features for its Microsoft 365 users, including voice controls and the Transcribe for Word feature. The company focuses primarily on the transcription function, with voice commands serving as a way to format text more easily in Word. This feature is now available for all users on web and mobile platforms and will come to the Word app for computers by the end of this year.
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The Transcribe for Word feature allows users to record conversations and transcribe them in real-time or upload a pre-recorded audio file. After transcription, users can make any necessary edits, view who spoke when and what they said, as well as the entire text or specific portions of the file. Users can also click on any timestamp in the recording to listen to the content at that moment. If privacy is a concern, Microsoft assures that they will not store recordings once they have been transcribed.
Currently, the feature is only available in Word on the web, so you can use it on any computer with any online meeting software you are using. However, to capture what the person on the other side is saying, you will need to ensure the microphone can pick up the audio coming out of the speaker. Microsoft plans to roll out this feature on Android and iOS by the end of this year, which will be helpful if you are recording meeting or interview content directly.
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The Transcribe for Word feature is exclusively available for subscribed Microsoft 365 users. Therefore, free users won't have access to this feature, and currently, it only supports American English. There are some limitations as well - you can only upload 300 minutes (or five hours) of total audio file time per month, and individual files are restricted to a size limit of 200 MB. However, Microsoft assures that they are working to eliminate those limitations in the future.
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