I know there are other users on this forum, like myself, who end up having to use Google docs more than they would like. I'm a writer at my job and I do a lot of writing and editing in GD. For the most part, I create my documents in Word and then share them as GD, but sometimes I get Google Docs shared with me that several other people are collaborating on.

Up until now, I've been cobbling together a solution by using Speech Productivity clip boards and Voice Computer. But I just discovered this Voice Typing page and it seems like the dictation and editing abilities within GD are actually more robust than I thought they were. Apparently, there is select-and-say ability.

The rub is that while my dictation is very good in GD now that I have turned on the Voice Typing feature, I'm not actually able to use any of the editing commands because I think Dragon is unable to read any text in a Google Doc. Only the Google Voice Typing tool would be able to read the text I've dictated, I think.

Is there a way to just use my microphone for Voice Typing and have it not be listening for Dragon? (Turning off my microphone in Dragon has not worked.) Ideally, I would want to be able to toggle these off and on. Any suggestions? 

As far as I know, multiple apps can listen to the microphone at one time. So turning your Dragon microphone off should stop Dragon from listening. When you say turning your mic off in Dragon has not worked, exactly what do you mean by "not worked?" Does Dragon listen anyway, even after you turn off the Dragon mic?

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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.

Good question. What I meant is that when I turned off my Dragon microphone, Google's Voice Typing wasn't working. But today (or at least after I had a good night sleep) it does appear to be working…. However, select-and-say quality is really poor. As in, it only seems to recognize one out of four phrases that I am asking it to select, even if I can see in the recognition box next to the Google Microphone that I said the phrase correctly. 

I wonder if it's using my laptop computer microphone and maybe that's why the recognition quality is poor? Although my Sennheiser headset microphone is the default one for Windows. 

 

 

In your screenshot, the "allow apps to take exclusive control" should not be checked (unless you really mean that only Dragon or only GDocs should have access to the mic). If that box is checked, then you would have to exit one app before you could use voice in the next app. My guess is that after you turn off Dragon (in exclusive mode), you would have to disable and enable the gdocs typing so that it would grab the mic exclusively for itself.

You need to be careful if you let multiple apps listen to the mic because phrases for one app will be interpreted by the other app simultaneously.

Gdocs has a particular set of phrases, as I am sure you know. So when you say it recognizes only one of four phrases, could you be more precise? Are all four gdocs phrases? If it recognizes one, I suppose you could infer that at least it is receiving input from the microphone.

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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.

Thanks for helping me problem solve this one. Some of the fine print that I missed reading is that Google Voice Typing in Docs only works with Google Chrome as a browser. Now that I am trying it in Chrome it definitely works better. I would say the dictation is very accurate, but deselecting and navigating capabilities leave a lot to be desired. For instance, you can't move the cursor to go before or after a specific word. You can only select a word or phrase by voice, and then move forward or backward a number of characters or words.

 

It's an odd feature to leave out especially when there are several pages of commands that seem much less likely to be used like "insert new column on the left" or "update table of contents". Probably an indication that this was not really meant for disabled users as much as for productivity purposes.

 

All my complaining aside, it is definitely an improvement over not having it. Word is still much better but if you have to use Docs, this does have some benefits.