Man talks into his cell phone while standing outside

Capture voice recordings in Office Mobile for Android

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Hi, Office Insiders! My name is Sanjay Joshi, and I’m a Program Manager on the Office Mobile team. I’m excited to announce that we’ve added a powerful new feature that allows you to capture and transcribe voice recordings on your Android device, directly from within Office Mobile.

Capture voice recordings

Whether you want to preserve a billion-dollar idea before you forget it or need to record an important discussion, the voice capture feature in Office Mobile has you covered. The feature allows you to go beyond simple voice memos, with live speech-to-text transcription. It also offers synced text highlighting during playback and the ability to share your content by exporting it to other Microsoft 365 apps and services.

If you are a Microsoft 365 subscriber, this feature can also partition and transcribe the input from different speakers based on their identity (also known as speaker diarisation).

How it works

Ready to give it a try? Here’s how to use the feature.

    1. In the Microsoft Office app on your Android device, tap the + button at the bottom of the Home tab.Screenshot showing Office Mobile for Android home tab.
    2. Under Quick capture, tap Voice to launch the voice capture experience.
      Android Office Mobile screen showing Quick capture options.

3. Start speaking to record and tap the Done button when finished.

Voice captures screen of Office Mobile for Android showing speech-to-text process and controls.Your recording will be saved as a voice card. You can view all your voice captures in a list view.

Voice captures screen in Office Mobile for Android showing recording cards4. To review your recording, select the voice card for playback with synced text highlighting. Your voice recordings are also available on your Home tab for easy access.

Office for Android home screen with voice capture recordings shown

Scenarios to try

  • Start the recording and try play/pause.
  • Observe the live speech-to-text process.
  • Finish and play back the recording.
  • Access recordings from Voice captures screen and Home tab.
  • Rename recording.
  • Delete recording.
  • Edit the transcribed text.
  • Change speaker name.
  • Export/share the text and recordings.

Availability

We will be rolling this feature out to users of the Office Mobile app for Android running Build 16.0.14026.20096 or later with “English (United States)” selected as their language and country/region.

Features are released over some time to ensure things are working smoothly. We highlight features that you may not have because they’re slowly releasing to larger numbers of Insiders. Sometimes we remove elements to further improve them based on your feedback. Though this is rare, we also reserve the option to pull a feature entirely out of the product, even if you, as an Insider, have had the opportunity to try it.

Feedback

We want to hear from you! Please share your feedback with us right from the app by tapping your profile icon on the Home tab, then selecting Send Feedback.

Learn what other information you should include in your feedback to ensure  it’s actionable and reaches the right people. We’re excited to hear from you!

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