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Save teachers and students time and effort with new transcription capabilities in Word
By Mike Tholfsen
Educators and students are actively spending time and energy adapting to virtual learning while handling life at home. Our bandwidth to figure out new processes, keep track of various conversations, and digitize workflows while still aspiring to do our best work is limited and that’s why we’re excited to share that Transcribe in Word is here.
Easy transcriptions save you time, effort, and help better remember conversations
There are several scenarios where Transcribe in Word can help – in example,
- For post-interview processing: From student assignments like interviewing a career role model to formal research studies, a lot of time is wasted today manually re-listening and transcribing recordings to gather quotes and annotate patterns. Students with may struggle focusing on the conversation while jotting down notes.
- For making the most of feedback sessions: Students may need feedback early in their essay-writing process, but when grading comes around, it may be difficult for educators to recollect all the suggestions given from an earlier chat. On the flip side, students may be overwhelmed by all the details in verbal feedback sessions as they try their best to remember it later.
- For referencing notes after meetings or video conferences: Educators may forgo jotting down notes in parent-teacher meeting to be present in the moment, but wish they had key details later.
- For creating during projects: Whether it’s for extracurricular clubs or hobbies such as journalism with the school paper or making a new podcast, a lot of time can be spent working with audio and video media or manually writing up transcripts to publish.
Transcribe in Word can help you stay focused on your conversation in the moment or preserve valuable time and energy by converting speech into text.
Getting started
- Make sure you’re signed into Microsoft 365 using the Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome web browser
- Go to the Home tab > Dictate dropdown > Transcribe button
- Select Start recording to Upload audio
- Check out your new transcript with timestamps, speaker labels, audio playback, and options to add the content into the document
Tip: To make this work over a video conferencing call, just start recording in Word while no headset is used so Word can pick up the sound coming out of the device.
Conversations that are recorded or uploaded are saved to your personal OneDrive. Transcribe individually separates different speakers so it’s clear which part was said by a teacher versus a student. After the conversation, parts of the recording can be played back by clicking on timestamped audio and the transcript can be edited.
With smartphones being ubiquitous for educators and students alike, Transcribe enables upload of audio that was recorded outside of Word. Whether recorded on a phone or elsewhere, simply select the file to upload and transcribe. Transcribe supports .
The transcript will appear alongside the Word document, along with the recording which can be played back to hear how something was said, not just read what was said. Want to send or work with an entire transcript? Simply click “add all to document” and the full transcript will be laid out in Word.
Here is a detailed video showing the entire scenario, step by step:
Transcribe in Word is available in Word for the web for all Microsoft 365 subscribers. Currently, only transcribing audio into English (EN-US) is supported. Transcribe in Office mobile will be coming by the end of the year. For more detailed steps see: Transcribe in Word
Mike Tholfsen
Principal Product Manager
Microsoft Education