Use speech to give commands in Access 2007

[Jac Tremblay]

Hi,
I want to know if it is possible to use speech recognition features to give
commands to search text or records, insert text in textboxes, etc. in an
Access 2007 application.
I know it is possible to use such features with Word and Excel 2003 but I
cannot find how to do it with the 2007 versions. I would like to have more
information about the latest developments Microsoft has done.
I use Windows XP Professional and Office 2007 Professional.
Thanks

 

[a a r o n . k e m p f]

I worked on the speech recognition team for MS Office several years
back.

But I would reccomed.. if you want to 'search' for certain keywords..
then you're going to want to move to 'full text search',.
This is included the SQL Server 2005 Express Edition.

It can make keyword searchs 100 times faster

 

[Jac Tremblay]

Hi Aaron,
I want to know if it is possible to give voice commands to an Access
application.
I want to have the application recognize what I say through a microphone and
act accordingly.
Once I have acheived that, I will try to search text and other useful
functions with my application. And if that works, I will probably use full
text search as you suggest but for now, it is irrelevant.
I learned that the Framework 3.0 had a new speech recognition feature as
well as Windows Vista but I am not ready to move to those versions.
I know that Office 2003 (English) had those options as well but not the 2007
version.
I want to know where the development of speech recognition is at with
Microsoft and other partners.
Thanks for your answer.

 

[Arvin Meyer [MVP]]

Hi Aaron,
I want to know if it is possible to give voice commands to an Access
application.
I want to have the application recognize what I say through a microphone
and
act accordingly.
Once I have acheived that, I will try to search text and other useful
functions with my application. And if that works, I will probably use full
text search as you suggest but for now, it is irrelevant.
I learned that the Framework 3.0 had a new speech recognition feature as
well as Windows Vista but I am not ready to move to those versions.
I know that Office 2003 (English) had those options as well but not the
2007
version.
I want to know where the development of speech recognition is at with
Microsoft and other partners.
Thanks for your answer.

I have used Dragon NaturallySpeaking to interface with Access databases 2002
and 2003, I can't say for sure whether it will work with other versions,
because I haven't tried it.:

http://www.nuance.com/naturallyspeaking/

 

[boblarson]

Sorry, you're going to be slightly disappointed (as I was when I found out).
The speech recognition has been moved out of Office and into Windows Vista.
So, if you have Windows Vista, then you have it (and it does work reasonably
well). But, if you don't have Vista then you will have to purchase a third
party tool to have that functionality.

And it doesn't matter for this one if you have SQL Server or Access as a
backend because the speech recognition doesn't exist in either one of those.

--
Bob Larson
Access World Forums Super Moderator
Utter Access VIP
Tutorials at http://www.btabdevelopment.com

__________________________________

 

[a a r o n . k e m p f]

Bob;

re:
to give commands to search text or records

So.. what you're saying is that 'full text search' has no performance
benefits to 'looking for a certain keyword in a large body of text'?

Well it's funny.. because Access can only scan a memo field. SQL
Server can 'seek' for a keyword. It's called fulltext search.. and
it's in the free SQL Server 2005 Express Edition.

It makes 'searching text' a _HELLOFA_ lot faster.

Access - as a database - just isn't useful for anyone. Wake up to the
90s and upsize to SQL Server.

-Aaron

 

[Jac Tremblay]

Hi Arvin,
Sorry I took so much time to answer, I was busy searching speech recognition
features available on the net and reading about it.
I checked out Dragon NaturallySpeaking and it sounds fantastic. I have not
tried it but have watched the demo.
I do not want to buy a product, I want to add speech recognition to an
application I have developped myself. I want to find some code examples for a
small project to get me going.
I have searched Google for Speech Recognition and found a few interesting
links but nothing to help me with my problem. The code is either not there or
in the VB 6 version. Since I use VB.NET, I have to convert the applications
which leads to 25 to 35 errors that I cannot correct because I do not know
how to. I do not have a working VB.NET project example.
I really appreciate your comment. It proves that someone somewhere masters
the feature.
Thanks.

 

[Jac Tremblay]

Hi Bob,
I do know that the speech recognition features have been removed from Office
(I switched to 2007) but I do know also that it becomes available with
Windows XP if one downloads the Microsoft Speech SDK 5.1.
The problem with that software is that it is outdated code that was written
in 2001 or so. When it is converted to VB.Net, it shows more than 30 errors
that I can't correct.
I need code examples (in VB.Net), not a finished product.
Thank you for your answer and your time.

 

[a a r o n . k e m p f]

http://www.microsoft.com/speech/

http://blogs.msdn.com/chuckop/

Speech Content in the Windows SDK
26 February 08 01:46 AM | Charles Oppermann | 4 Comments
I'm happy to announce the availability of the RTM release of the
Windows SDK. This release - the first RTM one since Vista - contains
the following speech-related items:

Updated: SAPI 5.3 documentation
Updated: System.Speech documentation
Updated: Sample source code
8 C++ projects
3 C# projects
2 sample engines - TTS and SR
New: Grammar Compiler (GC.EXE) tool now part of the tool binaries
included in the SDK
The Windows SDK completely replaces the older SAPI 5.1 SDK and
supports development on Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows
Vista, and Windows Server 2008.

 

[Arvin Meyer [MVP]]

Jac,

Access uses VBA which is a derivitive of VB6. You can use .NET, but you will
probably run into some incompatibilities. My suggestion would be to try and
find someone to build you a VB6 COM object from the code you found, which
you can then just set a reference to and use in your Access application.
--
Arvin Meyer, MCP, MVP
http://www.datastrat.com
http://www.mvps.org/access
http://www.accessmvp.com

 

[Jac Tremblay]

Hi Aaron,
Thanks for your comment.
I checked the info and find there is still a lack of support for VB.NET
developers.
I have major decision to take for the future.
Thanks again. It help me a lot even though it is not what I'm looking for.

 

[Jac Tremblay]

Hi Arvin,
That is a good idea. I'll have to think it over.
Thanks for your comment.

 

[a a r o n . k e m p f]

Still a lack of support for VB.net developers?? Where did you come up
with this?? Honestly-- I'd love to *enlighten* you further.

VB 2005 / 2008.. it is finally competitive with VB6-- from a
development perspective.

THINGS JUST WORK.

VB.net is more popular than C#!!! Microsoft's marketing department
states this. I will look for that link; I just saw it yesterday--
clear as a bell.

C# can't run code in SQL Server like VB can.
When SQL Server can run C# in jobs, scripts, and activeX scripts--
that is when I consider it a language.

VB.net is a great environment.
It is better than C#. I just hate all the extra characters that
you've got to write in C#.

And I mean.. CASE SENSITIVITY? Are you kidding me?

-Aaron