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Using Dictation and Speech?

After scanning a text document to preview can I use dictation and speech to read the text document aloud?
I have scanned the text document to preview but I’m unable to have the dictation and speech application read the text aloud as with other text?
Thanks for your patience!
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Charles Rogers

Comments: One Response to “Using Dictation and Speech?”

    11 years ago

    Yes. If you have a document open in Preview, and that document has text in it, then you can have the Mac's speech function read it to you.
    Just choose Edit, Speech, Start Speaking. At least that is what the menu command is in Mountain Lion. Can't remember the exact menu chain of submenus in earlier versions of OS X and Preview, so search for it if you don't see it.
    Now this assumes that the document is a PDF with text -- actual text that you can select, copy, paste, etc. If you cannot select the text, then it isn't text it is probably just a picture of text. There's a big difference.
    If you scanned the document in with software that uses OCR, then it should have real text in it.

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