u/TarletonClown

Hey . . . Is anyone here using the "Dictate" feature in Microsoft 365?

I have resisted using any subscription software. I already have the permanent, standalone Microsoft Office 2024, but guess what: It does not include the Dictate feature. You have got to subscribe in order to have access to Dictate.

So I am thinking about subscribing. I really need the Dictate feature. And, yes, I know about the built-in Windows Voice Typing feature. It does pretty well with accuracy, but I need to be able to give commands for punctuation, and it does not support that reliably.

I do not mind making corrections for words, because things always need some revision anyway, but I need to be able to put the commas and periods in where I want them to be. The same goes for quotation marks. You are supposed to be able to use commands to open a quote and close a quote, but all that I want to say on that subject is that these punctuation commands either do not work at all or they work unreliably.

Yes, I know that you are supposed to be able to turn automatic punctuation on/off with these programs, but I have not had any reliable success. I speak very clearly and at a moderate speed. All of that makes no difference. It seems that the designers of these programs think that everyone is a dummy who cannot punctuate properly. Consequently a pause or stumble may result in a comma or a period.

Please do not suggest any third-party programs. A nurse on Reddit has already recommended a particular program, which I bought, and it works reasonably well for getting the words; but the punctuation (if I use commands) is either erratic or does not work at all. If I say "comma" it may type the word "comma". Bottom line: Really, nothing that I have tried works reliably for letting me control my sentences.

It used to be, according to what I have read, that an older version of the Windows voice-to-text program would have you say "literal comma" when you wanted to insert the word "comma". Otherwise, a comma character would be inserted. That was a nice policy. But that does not work anymore. You probably know already that Microsoft will eventually f—k up anything and everything.

Microsoft will let you try the Microsoft 365 suite for a trial period. So, yes, I know that I can go ahead and investigate this whole issue on my own. And I will almost certainly do that. But it could be a bit of a hassle to activate the trial (you never know what problems you will stumble into).

I want to be able to use the Dictate feature to write fiction. So I need to be able to give a command like "Open quote" to open a piece of dialogue; and something like "Close quote" to end the dialogue.

So if anyone has answers, please respond. And I will probably check out the free trial.

Thanks in advance. Sorry about the length of this.

Hello, folks ... I have been on Reddit for a couple of years, but I have never participated in r/coreldraw (as far as I can remember).

I have a simple question. First I will say that I began using CorelDraw about 30 years ago, but have been inactive for a number of years. And that inactivity has made me forget a lot of things, and really I never learned much beyond the simple things anyway.

I have the most recent version of CorelDraw (yes, the subscription version).

I look things up online all the time, but sometimes I just want somebody to tell me how to do something.

Here is my simple question:

I want to put a wide, margin-to-margin text frame at the top of my two-column newsletter. Into that frame I will put the newsletter name in a large font. Just to the left of the newsletter name I want to put a simple graphic (I have a JPG file for it). I have already drawn a text frame for the newsletter name and have inserted the name in my desired font.

Should I now put the graphic into a frame of some kind, within the rectangle? Or just how do I go about doing what I want to do? I have been using computers (with many different applications) for 40 years, and I know I can figure this out. But I am open to advice.

Thanks to any and all who answer.

I am posting this here because the people here are very experienced in this issue.

Last November (2025) I paid in advance for a one-year subscription for InDesign. Not a plan under which I would pay in monthly installments. I paId for the whole year.

For reasons that are not relevant here, I never got into the program. I wanted to, but time was an issue. In addition, I kept encountering reports on Reddit about all sorts of problems with the program. I did not feel enthusiastic about studying a new software application, especially one with which people were having problems.

So I decided I would not renew my subscription to InDesign when it is about to run out in November. I also know that I should not wait until the last minute to cancel.

Am I correct that if I go through the cacellation procedure a couple of weeks prior to the expiration date, I should have no problem? It seems to me that the cancellation nightmare occurs for people who have opted to pay on a monthly basis.

I will tell you something else that may trigger some ire in more than a few of you. I know how terrible Adobe is. It is truly a horrible company.

But many years ago I learned how to use Adobe Framemaker 5.x. It was kind of tough to learn, but I learned it well enough to lay out some "blurbs" (as I called these dual-column little medical essays that I created and used for teaching materials that I handed out to medical students and residents). I could lay out text in a simple or sophisticated manner and import graphics into the pages.

I really liked Framemaker. But then my version of the program eventually became incompatible with an upgraded version of Windows. And in those days (before subscriptions) Framemaker was horrendously expensive. So that was the end of my work with Framemaker.

But I still have two or three nice books dealing with Framemaker. I am seriously thinking about taking out a subscription for it when I let InDesign go.

I have a couple of nonfiction books that I am working on, and I know that Framemaker would be perfect for one of them, and more than adequate for the other. Moreover, I want to produce a novel or two, and I know I could write in a word processor, and then do layout in Framemaker. I enjoy working with layout, fonts, and graphics, and I know I can do this kind of work in Framemaker.

(Sorry about any typos above. I did this with a phone.)

I thought I would post this, since it might help somebody. Recently I had to give up using Notepad++, which is a great text editor, because whenever I hit ENTER, an alert would pop up to tell me that I had a syntax error or had used an unrecognized character (or something like that). This happened, no matter what kind of text I was typing.

With some research I figured out that the problem might have to do with a plug-in that was malfunctioning. I had the "PyCalc" plug-in installed, and I think that it is something that I installed not long ago, though I am not sure.

Anyway, I removed the PyCalc plug-in, and the pop-up alert stopped appearing. I will hasten to point out that I had not selected Python as the language that I was using. I was typing ordinary text, not computer code.

About a week ago I saw someone on the internet posting a complaint about a similar or the same problem in Notepad++. I do not think that he had found a solution at that time.

I hope that my experience will help someone. I am happy that I am once again able to use Notepad++.