11.5

Deferred Correction (editions Professional and above)

As you have learned, correcting recognition errors helps Dragon NaturallySpeaking adapt your profile, which

allows it to transcribe more accurately for you. But what if you have no time to perform corrections before

closing the document you just dictated? In editions Professional and above, when you dictate in DragonPad,

Microsoft Word or Corel WordPerfect, the opportunity is not lost: Dragon can save the audio in synchronization

with the text you dictated, so you can later play it back and make corrections as needed.

This feature also allows you to have someone else correct misrecognitions in your dictated documents—which

means your profile can benefit from corrections refined without any work on your part!

Saving the Recorded Dictation (.DRA file)

Step 1: Dictate into DragonPad, Microsoft Word or Corel WordPerfect. (If you wish to make any corrections

now, do so.) Save the document as you normally would.

(Note for DragonPad users: Because DragonPad doesn’t have an autosave feature, it’s a good idea to

name your document early on and save it regularly.)

Step 2: Dragon asks whether you want to save the associated recording. (Your word-processor’s autosave

feature may even trigger this message for you). If you or someone else will be using Playback or

Correction in this document later, choose Yes.

Dragon then saves, in the same location as your text document, a file bearing the same name, with the

extension .DRA. You may now exit the word processor -- and Dragon, if you wish. You can even shut

down the computer.

TIP By default, whenever a word-processor document is saved, Dragon asks whether you want to save the

recording. In the Options dialog, you can change that setting to always save, or on the contrary, never save.

Recorded dictation files can get very large, so you should only save them if Correction is to take place at a

later time; without the recorded dictation, you can still edit and format the document as usual.