Hi. Have just updated to Thunderbird 102 and it is not allowing even basic dictation directly into a Thunderbird window. With previous versions of Thunderbird you could use basic dictation. Anyone have any suggestions? (I know you recommend outlook but the way we work is more compatible with Thunderbird). Thanks very much

Because Thunderbird is not a Dragon friendly utility, you may or may not be able to dictate at any given time. It is a crap shoot.  Our 1st recommendation would be for you to decide just how important email is. As a business, we respond to a lot of messages so Thunderbird and Firefox are not viable options. You might not be thrilled with Outlook but in our opinion, it rules solely because it is Dragon friendly. Even if you could Thunderbird dictate, you cannot select words by voice and when you correct, you're likely to get unwanted spacing and capitalization. For us, it simply isn't worth the frustration. You can optionally use Dragon's Dictation Box for correcting and transferring your text but you know that you will need to proofread again, find mistakes and make more corrections before sending your message. No matter how efficient you are with cutting and transferring text, you're still taking a productivity hit. As you probably know, we use DragonCapture which allows you to directly dictate into non-Dragon friendly environments. This would give you back the ability to directly dictate into Thunderbird and even capitalize the 1st letter of the 1st word but because Dragon doesn't know where your words are, editing will still be a bit tricky. We use the KnowBrainer 2020 Type command for editing but as cool as that sounds, it is still not quite as good as dictating into a Dragon friendly environment. It all boils down to what your time is worth. We use email for business so no matter how much we might like or dislike Outlook, it is the only game in town. If we were using Thunderbird or any other non-Dragon friendly application, we would do whatever it takes to convert everything to Outlook. We believe there are tools available for this function.

If you don't like Microsoft 365, you can optionally use Gmail in a Dragon friendly browser; typically Chrome or Edge. This will also give you Full Text Control but from a functional point of view, you will be limited because KnowBrainer 2020 puts Outlook on steroids. For example, for anyone we have emailed before, we can create a new message with the Email <dictation> command. We do not have to memorize email addresses or type in a partial email address. If we say Subject <dictation>, everything we dictate will appear in Title Case. When we complete our dictation, the cursor will be moved to the Message box. We can respond to messages by saying Reply <dictation>. We can apply special formatting, highlight, hyperlink and color text; like we did here. When we are done we can say Send and Delete to send our message, delete the original message and preview the next message. You have a lot of email options but we like to cook with gas

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I am using Thunderbird in many of the Speech Productivity demonstration videos. These two to make a perfect pair. Particularly if you want to dictate with genuine Select-and-Say-Control.

 

Although I never experienced the inability to do simple (so-called "dumb") dictation in Thunderbird, I always use it in combination with Auto Box©. This allows full Select-and-Say control while dictating and without having to say "Transfer" all the time. 

 

Although the current version of Auto Box© is much more advanced as you can see in this video (and the upcoming version for SP 8 Standard will take it to a whole new level), this very early video perfectly demonstrates dictating with full Select-and-Say control in Thunderbird:

 

https://youtu.be/PcJIPD44_Uc

 

Auto Box© also allows seamlessly changing your dictation target as demonstrated in another early video:

 

https://youtu.be/wgLemL4LWd4

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FWIW, for the short time that I used and experimented with AutoBox, QuickBox, TinyBox, (and the other six boxes that Rob produces!), it was clear to me that using those boxes was a very fast and effective way to dictate into all kinds of apps. I did not take the time to practice enough to become an expert like Rob and RW are with their utilities (both demonstrate amazing and flawless demos). Instead, under work pressure, I fell back into the habit of using my hands for mouse movements and typing.

I particularly liked the technique of telling one of the boxes to select-all-in-the-target-app, copy, paste-into-box-for-editing, and paste edited text back into the target app. That was amazing.

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Win10/11/x64, AMD Ryzen 7 3700X/3950X, 64/128GB RAM, Dragon 15.3, SP 7 Standard, SpeechStart, Office 365, KB 2017, Dragon Capture, Samson Meteor USB Desk Mic, Amazon YUWAKAYI headset, Klim and JUKSTG earbuds with microphones, excellent Sareville Wireless Mono Headset, 3 BenQ 2560x1440 monitors, Microsoft Sculpt Keyboard and Logitech G502 awesome gaming mouse.