First introduced at Ignite 2019, Microsoft’s Office Mobile app combines the best of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Forms to give users a complete productivity suite on the go. While Office Mobile is currently doing a great job for mobile users, it has become even more useful with a recent update. Microsoft is now Added a powerful tool to allow users to capture and transcribe audio recordings within Office Mobile and resembles the Google Recorder application. Today we will test this new feature and you will learn how to use Office Mobile’s new voice memo tool.
Convert Voice Memos to Text in Microsoft Office Mobile (2021)
According to Microsoft, the new voice memos feature is available in the Office Mobile app for Android running 16.0.14026.20096 or later. And the device language should be set to English (United States). I tried the feature in Office Mobile version 16.0.14131.20036. So let’s see how the voice memo feature works.
Steps to Access Microsoft Office Mobile’s Voice Memos Tool
1. Open the Microsoft Office application (freewith in-app purchases) on your Android device and Tap the “+” button located in the middle of the bottom navigation bar.
2. When the pop-up menu appears, Choose “Audio” It’s under the Quick Capture section. This option will take you to the audio recording interface.
3. While in the recording UI, press the microphone icon Click below to start a new audio recording.
4. You will see the transcript of your speech in real time while in the recording interface. You can tap the microphone icon again to pause or press “Done” to finish sound recording.
5. Microsoft will now save your audio recording to your OneDrive account. You should also remember that you need an active internet connection for live transcription to work as intended. However, after you sync the recording with OneDrive, you will get the transcript. This is different from the Google Recorder app, where transcription also works offline.
Edit Copied Text in Office Mobile
If Office Mobile guesses some words in the transcript incorrectly, you can manually correct them. Here’s how:
1. Open an audio recording and Tap the “Edit” button located in the lower left corner of the screen.
2. You can now edit transcription and Press “Done” If you’re wondering, removing certain parts of the text will not delete the corresponding audio from the saved file.
Share Text or Voice Memos with Others
You can share the audio recording as an audio file or export the transcript to a Word document. Here’s how to get started:
1. From the audio recording interface, Press the “Share” button in the lower right corner.
2. Now you will see the option to export or share the file. If you want the transcript as a Word document, “Tap on Word document“. On the next page, tap “Yes” to confirm.
3. Similarly, if you are interested in sharing the audio file, Tap “Audio file” and hit “Share as link” To create the access link for the voice memo. You can invite people to access the file by adding their email address in the “Invite people to this file” text box.
4. Before creating the link, you can choose to allow edit access or set the file to view-only. Choose any of these options and you will be taken to the share page to share the link. Others can then open the link to access the recording.
Record Voice Memos with Transcription in Microsoft Office
So you can use Microsoft’s newest tool to capture and share transcripted voice memos on mobile devices. If you’re a Microsoft 365 subscriber, Microsoft says this feature will also segment and copy input from different speakers based on their IDs. Try the feature and let us know your experience in the comments.