Windows 8.1 Maill App 17.5.9600.20279 Buggy With

The first thing to do is to ensure that you start WSR, Windows Speech Recognition, before any of the program.

Marty Markoe, MyMSSpeech.com
Microsoft MVP 2010-2011
See the WSRToolkit

I did extensive testing this AM. Please read through to the bottom.

bmxjumperc wrote: I tried editing text in the IE 11 browser also fails in the same way.

Where in the browser? I was able to dictate a search in the Internet Explorer 11 URL field. I was able to select the word I had dictated and then say correct and it worked fine.

I can dictate this message and make corrections, but it looks like in advanced HTML text speech recognition makes inaccurate string selections.

That is most likely correct. WSR, Windows Speech Recognition, is designed to work in text fields that are TSF, text services frameworks, compliant. TSF is the Microsoft specification that must be adhered to when designing applications if they are to work with speech recognition. The only way around this is to use the built in WSR scratch pad. To enable this feature, right click the microphone icon on the Speech Bar. Select Options, and then enable dictation scratchpad. This will popup and little box that allows you to dictate it and then transfer text into the non compliant text field. You may have to restart Windows Speech Recognition in order for this feature and to begin.

Chrome browser doesn't cooperate with speech recognition at all.

In Chrome for the most part, the Show numbers command worked fine. There were some that did not execute like the back button. However, I was able to dictate into the chrome search field. Again in may not be fully TSF compliant and this can be expected as cool goal and Microsoft are competitors in the browser field.
Because of the problems you are having I decided to test how WSR Works for me in standard applications. Much to my dismay, I too was having trouble like you dictating into Microsoft Outlook 2013 e-mail. However, the text you are reading now has dictated perfectly in Microsoft Word 2013.

My guess is that something in the Windows 8.1 update has screwed up the Microsoft Outlook add in for Windows Speech Recognition. There were several other problems when I first loaded Windows 8.1 that were fixed with updates. I’m going to go check to see if their other updates that need to be applied. To me, the strangest thing is that it works in Microsoft Word 2013 but not in Microsoft Outlook 2013 which is supposed to use Microsoft Word as the editor. I even tried using the dictation scratchpad mentioned above in Microsoft Outlook. This did not work (popup).

The bottom line is, the problems you were experiencing are valid. The only hope is that an update to Microsoft Windows 8.1 will fix these.

Marty

I wish I knew what it was that you did to correct that particular issue. I'm having the same problem with WSR and the mail app; corrections are simply wrong, choosing incorrect words.

I'm just hoping that it is something that they will be able to correct within the next version of the mail program.