If you’ve spent any time in school, you’d recognize that lectures are a huge part of every student’s educational foundation. And in most cases, lessons delivered verbally account for the vast majority of time spent in class. But what if you have hearing challenges? What if your prone to distraction? What if your specific learning disability affects your ability to adequately process information that is delivered orally?
The new transcribe feature for Microsoft Word online was designed with exactly those questions in mind. The answer? A free transcription service that converts audio recordings into text which can then be edited, formatted, read aloud at a slower pace, and more. This service is free (but only available to Microsoft 365 subscribers), incredibly easy to use, and is surprisingly accurate, even with lower quality audio recordings and equipment.
Let’s take a look at the steps involved in transcribing audio via Microsoft Word:
1. Go to www.office.com and sign in. You will need to have a valid Microsoft 365 subscription.
2. Launch Word from the app menu on the left-hand side of your screen and create a new document.
3. From the Home tab, click on the drop-down menu directly to the right of the Dictate function and select Transcribe.
4. The transcribe window will now appear on the right-hand side of the screen. From here, you can choose to either upload an audio file (.wav, .mp4, .m4a, .mp3), or you can start recording.
5. To record, click on “start recording”. You can start and stop the recording as often as you need by pressing the pause/play button.
6. Once you’re finished recording, click on “save and transcribe now”. The recording will be saved to your OneDrive account, and the complete transcription will appear in the transcription window.
7. Now, you can play back audio, rewind, fast forward, etc., and below the audio, you’ll see a complete text breakdown of the conversation with timestamps and speaker names.
8. Next, you can name individual speakers so that they are identified via text, and also adjust the transcribed text if you notice any errors.
9. Now, click on “Add all to document”, and the complete text transcription will be instantly added to the word doc, complete with speakers’ names, timestamps, and a link to the audio recording.
With those steps completed, your audio will have been fully converted into editable text which can then be formatted, studied, read aloud, shared, re-arranged, printed out, imported into other apps, and more!
Please note that this service is currently in English only.
