11.0

Dragon NaturallySpeaking and Microsoft Word

In “Controlling the Operating System and Applications”, you learned about Natural Language Commands. Since

Microsoft Word is an application many people use, this chapter lists built-in commands for this word processor.

Corel WordPerfect has similar commands, so it shares the same Dragon Sidebar content.

Remember that if your system resources are low, enabling Natural Language Commands could decrease

Dragon’s speed. (Note also that if an application’s set is disabled, the Dragon Sidebar will not show special

content for that application; instead, it will show Global commands).

In addition to commands, this chapter covers special points of interest regarding Microsoft Word: ctfmon.exe

and the Voice Notation feature.

Special note for Windows XP: turning off CTFMON

After installing Dragon on a Windows XP operating system, errors may start appearing when using Microsoft

Word if the Microsoft Alternate User Input application (CTFMON.EXE) is also running. You can disable

CTFMON.exe thanks to a simple checkbox on the Miscellaneous tab of the Administrative Settings dialog box.

(Administrative Settings is in the DragonBar’s Tools menu.)

“Voice Notations” in Microsoft Word documents

The higher editions of Dragon let you add “Voice Notations” in Word: text that can later be used with Word's

Accept/Reject Change functionality. A Notation could be anything you do not want permanently in your

document or you do not want transcribed, e.g. instructions you speak for the benefit of your assistant. Voice

Notations are not used by the Acoustic and Language Model Optimizer.

To add a Voice Notation, press the Esc key while dictating. Voice Notations are highlighted in green and

formatted as red italic text.

Commands specific to Microsoft Word

For applications like Word, Dragon has so many commands (and many different wordings for most commands),

that we couldn’t possibly list them all here or in the Sidebar.

If you are working in a supported application and you encounter an action you’d like to perform by voice, use

the Command Browser’s Context list to pick that application and use its Filter to see just the commands that

contain a particular word or words. If you see a command that looks interesting, make sure it’s highlighted in

the list, then use the Browse menu to uncover its full wordings (for instance, to include all optional words or

expand ellipses.)

TIP

: If you say what you think is a command but Dragon takes no action or just transcribes the words on the

screen, look for the Results box. If you do not see your command (with a thick border around it), Dragon did

not recognize what you said as a valid command for the current situation: for instance, if you say "Insert a 2 by

2 Table" when the insertion point is inside a table, nothing happens because one cannot insert a table inside a

table.

Pictured below is an example of a Help topic listing commands for working in Word documents.