Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional 12 software is great! It lets you dictate text and navigate documents on your PC…just by talking…without touching the keyboard or mouse! But did you know it can do a host of other tasks?
If you only use Dragon to create e-mails or dictate letters, read on…you may find that your Dragon is much more powerful than you ever realised.
Surfing the web
The next time you fire up Dragon, go into Internet Explorer (by saying “Start Internet Explorer”) and say “Go To Address Bar”, “www.freedom-speech.co.uk”, ”Go There” and you’ll be looking at our website without touching the keyboard or mouse! To move down any webpage say “Start Scrolling Down” and watch the page slowly scroll down until you say “Stop Scrolling”. If you want to click on a text link, just say the name of that link…it is as easy as that!
Click anywhere on your screen
Try saying “MouseGrid” at any point you want to move the mouse to a specific point on the screen. A grid of 3 by 3 squares appears overlaying the current application. Now say the number of the square you want the mouse to move to…this shrinks the grid into this square (it’s like using the zoom lens on a camera)...keep saying the number of the square you want the mouse to go and when it’s over the right spot say “Mouse Click” or “Mouse Double Click”
Jump from application to application
To move quickly from one application to another, say “List All Windows”. A window pops up showing you all of your active applications with a number next to each one. Now say “Choose <number>” i.e. “Choose 3” to switch to the third application in the list.
Have your document read to you
The next time you create a really important piece of text that you can’t afford to have any mistakes in, highlight it (normally “Select All” will do that) and say “Read That”. Dragon will read the text back to you in a human sounding voice which makes proof reading a dream. Try using this command in long e-mails giving your eyes a well-earned rest from staring at your screen!
Hopefully this has given you a flavour of the more powerful voice commands available to you in this really productive application…watch this space for future instalments.