Microsoft Word 365 Dictation not working in school

[Theldron]

Hi all,

 

Got a new student that needs to use dictation through Microsoft Word to type out his coursework. Only thing is the we keep getting an error saying "Dictate needs internet connection to work. Please connect to the internet." I assume this is a firewall/proxy issue. Does anyone know what needs to be open to allow this to work?

 

Many thanks

[Theldron]

Hi all,

 

Got a new student that needs to use dictation through Microsoft Word to type out his coursework. Only thing is the we keep getting an error saying "Dictate needs internet connection to work. Please connect to the internet." I assume this is a firewall/proxy issue. Does anyone know what needs to be open to allow this to work?

 

Many thanks

 

Help! I need somebody help!!

 

Sorry the parents are jumping on my back and my legs are giving way on this. Any ideas?

[round2it]

ask your isp to do a network trace on the pc trying to use dictation see what is being blocked

 

or look at something like text help read write gold it is really good for special needs students, reads pdfs dictation the lot might be worth investing in a site licence (Very cheap)

Edited October 12, 2018 by round2it

[Theldron]

Thanks mate, ill give that a try. Its the speech to text I need and I am not sure read write gold does that.

[round2it]

https://www.texthelp.com/en-gb/products/read-write/assistive-technology-dyslexia-software/

 

it does what you require look half way down the page

[round2it]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PICjsTERVnk&safe=true

[jools96]

Did you ever find a solution to this? I've got exactly the same problem

 

Many thanks

 

Jools

[Theldron]

Did you ever find a solution to this? I've got exactly the same problem

 

Many thanks

 

Jools

 

Hi Jools,

 

No, never could get the word dictation to work. But I worked around it by using the Windows 10 speech recognition which can also be used to type with.

 

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-set-speech-recognition-windows-10

 

It worked well enough to keep them happy.

[jools96]

Thanks. That sounds like a good solution. It’s a shame the built in one doesn’t work as it’s very good when it does. It’s only for 2 students at the moment so I can’t afford to spend too much time troubleshooting

 

Cheers

 

Jools

[free780]

I fixed this today. There's a domain it uses which ends in bing.com. It needs allowing through your proxy with no authentication or https inspection. I'll try and get it tomorrow.

[jools96]

Thanks for your reply. I would be interested in hearing how you fixed it if you have time to post the solution

 

Many thanks

 

Jools

[abaxter2]

The URL's that I needed to whitelist are:

 

officespeech.platform.bing.com

 

websockets.platform.bing.com

 

These URL's cannot use a proxy server that needs authentication or https inspection, I just added a rule via GPO to not use the proxy server for these URL's.

 

I also found that the dictation that is now built in to Word (Office 365 click to run version) also needs / uses "Office intelligent services" but I found with my devices that use office device based activation, that option to turn this on was not there, so I use the free addon: https://dictate.ms/ this still needs the above URL's whitelisted if you are using a proxy that needs authentication or https inspection, also if you do use the addon use the machine level installation option: https://dictate.ms/FAQ - Scroll down until you see: "Is it possible to do machine level installation instead of user level?" otherwise it will only work for user who installed the addon.

 

Also to note that OneNote also uses the above URL's for its dictation feature.

[jools96]

Thanks for taking the time to post your solution. Unfortunately I still can't get it working. I suspect for us it's a firewall issue. If I try it on the same computer but with a different internet line, it works. I will see if I can work out what needs to be allowed

 

Jools

[dmason2]

Hi Jools

Did you manage to find a solution to this, having the same issue at the moment and the links from the tread are now outdated

Cheers

[Oaktech]

We were unable to use the office 365 dictation due to the type and number of URL's that needed to be whitelisted. We chose to use the built in windows 10 accessibility options speech recognition, which, while it takes longer to train in the first place is actually more flexible.

[dmason2]

so after all the digging , oddly enough, the same feature in onenote works just fine

[round2it]

i just went for dragon, i was impressed with it out of the box. Understands accents etc.

 

very expensive but got the money from send so all is good