Microsoft Excel Speech.Speak Object

Microsoft Excel is the only Microsoft Office XP program that has built-in text to Speech (TTS) capabilities. This tip explains how you can use OLE Automation to programmatically access the Excel Object model and use the Text to Speech functionality.

Speech Method – Contains methods and properties that pertain to speech.

Name                                                                                            Description

Speak              Microsoft Excel plays back the text string that is passed as an argument

Speak Members – Contains methods and properties that pertain to speech.

Syntax

expression .Speak(Text, SpeakAsync, SpeakXML, Purge)

expression A variable that represents a Speech object.

Parameters

Name	Required/Optional	Data Type	Description
Text	Required	String	The text to be spoken.
SpeakAsync	Optional	Variant	True will cause the Text to be spoken asynchronously (the method will not wait of the Text to be spoken). False will cause the Text to be spoken synchronously (the method waits for the Text to be spoken before continuing). The default is False.
SpeakXML	Optional	Variant	True will cause the Text to be interpreted as XML. False will cause the Text to not be interpreted as XML, so any XML tags will be read and not interpreted. The default is False.
Purge	Optional	Variant	True will cause current speech to be terminated and any buffered text to be purged before Text is spoken. False will not cause the current speech to be terminated and will not purge the buffered text before Text is spoken. The default is False.

Using the Speech Object

Use the Speech property of the Application object to return a Speech object.

Once a Speech object is returned, you can use the Speak method of Speech object to play back the contents of a string. In the following example, Microsoft Excel plays back “Hello, How are you”. This example assumes speech feature have been installed on the host system.

Code:-

Set ObjExcel = CreateObject (“Excel.Application”)

ObjExcel.Speech.Speak “Hello, How are you?”

Set ObjExcel=Nothing