I typed in my Word 2016: Narrator
The result is below:
“Read Aloud is only available for Office 2019, Office 2021, and Microsoft 365”
You can buy Office but they need you to have Windows 10.
You want to buy the one time purchase version like Office 2021
Do not rent Office 365....
I appreciate y’all’s assistance with this. I had already looked in a bunch of different places for a solution.
Then I decided to give up on Word. The problem is, the PC has fully-updated modern version of 365 which I was basically forced to purchase for a job that I don’t have anymore.
I know Windows 10 sucks. As above, I had to use certain things to be able to do transcription and there was no choice. Word 365 has a thing called “immersive reader” that interacts with Window’s narrator.
I don’t have that job anymore so I have used Linux and Libreoffice and got used to them: Libreoffice can open all the document types in “office” so I started thinking there was probably a way to get Libreoffice writer to read just what I want it to read without helpfully reading all the other BS on the screen like “narrator” does.
There is an extension you can download from Libreoffice’s extensions page that will solve the problem on Windows 10 called “read text.” I decided to give this a try.
To use this extension you select the block of text you want read aloud (to read the whole document use ctrl-A to select all the text). Then you have to click on “tools” and scroll all the way to the bottom of the thing where you’ll see “add ons” (that might be new if you never installed an extension before). Then you select “read aloud” and THEN if you just installed there’s another box that comes up asking you what voice engine you want to use. The one that Windows uses is already selected so you just need to click “ok” - BUT WAIT!
There’s an item at the bottom of that menu that says “Always show this dialog” so if you don’t want to click “ok” every single time then deselect that.
And I guess you could make a macro as well just to choose that extension when you have your text selected so you don’t have to use the mouse.
Anyway I installed the extension and used it and it read everything using the Windows narrator voice. So problem solved and I appreciate everybody’s help.
Also, to Minnesota_bound: As noted above, Windows is something I was forced to use for my job and I have never liked it since day one. When I didn’t have the job anymore they just auto-billed us for another year so now I have to remember to remove that because they’ll probably be billing again pretty soon. They’re crooks.