{"id":219414,"date":"2025-08-05T04:13:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T09:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/microsoft-outdated-office-apps-lose-access-to-voice-features-in-january"},"modified":"2025-08-05T04:13:00","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T09:13:00","slug":"microsoft-outdated-office-apps-lose-access-to-voice-features-in-january","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/microsoft-outdated-office-apps-lose-access-to-voice-features-in-january","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft: Outdated Office apps lose access to voice features in January"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/microsoft-outdated-office-apps-lose-access-to-voice-features-in-january.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Microsoft announced that the transcription, dictation, and read aloud features will stop working in older versions of Office 365 applications in late January 2026.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/support.microsoft.com\/office\/listen-to-your-word-documents-5a2de7f3-1ef4-4795-b24e-64fc2731b001\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Read aloud<\/a> lets users hear documents and emails read back, <a href=\"https:\/\/support.microsoft.com\/office\/transcribe-your-recordings-7fc2efec-245e-45f0-b053-2a97531ecf57\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">transcription<\/a> converts speech into text in real-time, and the <a href=\"https:\/\/support.microsoft.com\/office\/dictate-your-documents-in-word-3876e05f-3fcc-418f-b8ab-db7ce0d11d3c\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">dictation<\/a> feature allows for voice-to-text input across Office applications.<\/p>\n<p>The company advised customers to update their Microsoft 365 Office apps to a version higher than 16.0.18827.20202 (released in <a href=\"https:\/\/learn.microsoft.com\/en-us\/officeupdates\/update-history-microsoft365-apps-by-date#:~:text=18730.20240,July%208%2C%202025\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">early July<\/a>) by the end of January 2026 to maintain access to these accessibility and productivity features.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Microsoft announced that the transcription, dictation, and read aloud features will stop working in older versions of Office 365 applications in late January 2026. Read aloud lets users hear documents and emails read back, transcription converts speech into text in real-time, and the dictation feature allows for voice-to-text input across Office applications. The company advised [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-219414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-futurism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219414\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}