How to Create Text to Speech Presentations

Use Office Suite to create text to speech presentations.

A text to speech (TTS) application allows voice-over narration without the need to record the audio. The process involves synthesized speech that pulls words from a stored database. The makes a presentation dynamic for everyone in your audience, including those with vision disabilities. Microsoft provides a module in their Excel program that is capable of text to speech conversions. You can insert this module into other Office Suite programs and provide TTS capabilities for your presentations.

Things You'll Need

• Microsoft Office Suite

Instructions

PowerPoint

1. Open PowerPoint on your computer.

2. Press the "ALT" + "F11" keys on your keyboard. This opens the editor for Visual Basic.

3. Click "Insert" at the top of the editor screen and select "Module."

4. Copy the code below into the module screen.

   *******************************
   Sub demoTTS()

   'Declare and create an Excel object.
   Dim XL As Excel.Application
   Set XL = CreateObject("Excel.Application")

   ActivePresentation.SlideShowSettings.Run

   With SlideShowWindows(1).View
   'The following is said on the first slide:
   XL.Speech.Speak "Welcome to my presentation."
   'Change to slide 2, and then say the following two sentences:
   .Next
   XL.Speech.Speak "This is an example of how to create an Excel Application object."
   XL.Speech.Speak "We can use Excel's object model to invoke Text to Speech."

   'Close the Excel object and set the object to nothing.
   XL.Quit
   Set XL = Nothing

   'Exit the slideshow.
   .Exit
   End With

   End Sub

   *******************************

5. Select "References" from the editor's "Tools" menu.

6. Choose "Microsoft Excel 10.0 Object Library" under the options in "Available References." Click "OK" to close the window.

7. Click the "Tools" menu located at the top of the window.

8. Point to "Macro" and click on "Security."

9. Move to the "Security Level" tab and select "Medium." Click the "OK" button.

10. Restart PowerPoint and preview the document to see TTS in action.

Word

1. Open Word on your computer.

2. Follow steps 2 and 3 in Section 1 but in the Word program.

3. Copy the following code to the Visual Basic Editor.

   *******************************
   Sub TTS()
   'Declare and create an Excel object.
   Dim XL_tts As Excel.Application
   Set XL_tts = CreateObject("Excel.Application")
   XL_tts.Speech.Speak Selection
   XL_tts.Quit
   Set XL_tts = Nothing
   End Sub

   *******************************

4. Complete the module insert using steps 5 through 9 in Section 1. Microsoft Office is designed so the same actions work on all the programs. What adds a module to PowerPoint also works in Word.

5. Restart Word on your computer and preview your document.

References

• Microsoft Support: How to automate Excel Text to Speech in another Office program