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By now you've probably heard about Microsoft Word's dictation feature that allows you to
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author documents with speech-to-text using a microphone and reliable internet connection. If you haven't, check out the quick two-minute recap on my channel
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But building off that dictation technology, Microsoft has enabled the ability for users
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to transcribe audio similar to services like Otter or Descript. This includes live recordings where multiple participants are speaking, such as meetings
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and interviews, or record audio, like MP3 audio files from a Zoom meeting
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Here's how it works. So before we start, it's important to know that if you're using Word Online, you need
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to have the Chrome or Edge browser. If you have a Mac and use Safari like I do, you won't be able to see the transcription
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feature yet. But if you have Chrome or Edge, then you're good to go
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So start by navigating to Word Online. Select the dropdown to the right side of the dictate button and choose transcribe
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Here you'll see your two options. Let's start with the option to start recording
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This will enable Word to capture and transcribe the audio from the conversation I'm about
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to have with a student. At the bottom of the window, you can select the language for this transcription
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Now that I'm ready, I'm going to start my interview and select the button that says
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start recording. Hello, Sammy. How are you? Good. Are you ready for our reading activity? Yeah
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What's your favorite part about reading? That we get to use our Super Kid Book. Okay, thank you. After a few moments, the audio will be transcribed
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As you can see, the built-in artificial intelligence will detect the different speakers as well
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as the time stamp from the recorded audio. And I can play the audio back at any time
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Hello, Sammy. How are you? Good. Are you ready for our reading activity? Yeah
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I'm going to edit the names of each speaker for clarity. First myself, and then Sammy
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Then I'm going to play back the audio to clean up any of the transcription text
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Now that I'm ready, I'm going to start my interview and select the button that says start recording
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Hello, Sammy. How are you? Good. Are you ready for our reading activity? Yeah
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What's your favorite part about reading? That we get to use our Super Kid Book. Okay, thank you. I can easily edit any of the incorrect transcriptions from Sammy's audio
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Once my audio is cleaned up, I can start to build my document
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Clicking the plus button next to any transcription will add the text to my document
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You can add line by line, or you can add all the transcriptions at once, selecting which
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part you want to include in your document. There we go. As you can see, the entire transcription is now inside my Word document, and that includes
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the speaker, the text, the timestamps, and the actual audio recording. Of course, I can edit any of this on the actual document as well
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And if I want to find the actual audio file of the recording, it will automatically be
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saved in my OneDrive. Now speaking of audio recordings, there's one more feature that I want to share, and
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that's the ability to transcribe any audio file. So here's an MP3 file of a podcast I can upload, and in a few moments, Word will automatically
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transcribe that as well. Now it should be noted that while this service is initially free, there is a limit
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Users are restricted to 300 minutes of transcription per month, but if you need more time, there
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are several plans that you can upgrade. So whether you need to transcribe an entire conversation or an audio file that you've
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previously recorded, Word Online's transcription feature is a fantastic free option
