Automatic Transcription of Conversations Now Possible in Microsoft Word

 Manually transcribing long conversations of those meetings quite often can be quite a draining task. It can take hours for you to transcribe hour-long discussions manually. Why not make use of the advanced AI algorithms to have an automatic transcription service? Well, this is what Microsoft has done in the latest update to the web-based version of Microsoft Word. This new functionality will do all the work on behalf of you and give you a complete transcript of the input audio.

How Does This Feature Work?

Microsoft has recently announced this update in its blog post, which provided a guide to using Microsoft’s new feature to automatically transcribe audios, edit transcriptions, and share the transcripts so created.

As of now, the future is only available in the web-based variant of Microsoft Word. Microsoft Word Online is the company’s effort to compete with the rival Google Docs. Even though the online version of Microsoft word is free to use, the users will need to have a premium account to make use of the transcription functionality. The transcription tool can be accessed by heading over to the Dictate tab on the ribbon. When you are done activating it, you can perform any of the two actions as mentioned below;

Firstly, you can give Word access to your microphone while you are in a meeting or a call conversation. When the meeting or the interview comes to an end, the tool will automatically generate a full transcript of the whole conversation.

Secondly, if you have an audio file of the meeting or the conversation that you want to transcribe, you can simply upload the audio file to Word, after which the tool will try to convert the audio into text through its speech recognition functionality. You can even assign names to individual speakers by using the transcription editor tool that comes along with it.

The tool will do its best to assign the speech to the right speaker. In case it makes an error while assigning the speech, you will need to edit it manually through the editing tool. While using the editing tool, when you assign a name to a speaker, the tool will automatically assign the same name for all the dialogues said by that speaker in the audio.

As most of us are now working from our homes due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this can be an extremely useful tool to transcribe the zoom calls for keeping the conversation on record. Other alternatives like Google Docs and LibreOffice can be expected to launch this function shortly.

Hey there, I’m Oliviya . I’m a web developer living in USA. I am a fan of photography, technology, and design. I’m also interested in arts and web development. You can visit my site with a click on the button above. Also read my Blog, Howtouk

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