G'Day jayratch,

Please try the following:
Right-Click the Windows Task bar.
Click "Toolbars"
Click "Language bar"

If that is successful then:
Right Click the Language bar (it will be on the task bar)
Click "Restore the Language bar"
Position it somewhere convenient (near the top?) on the
Screen.

Start Word.

At the Right hand end of the Language bar:
Click the tiny Drop Arrow and ensure that "Speak Text"
is
ticked
This will put a "Speak" button on the Language bar.

(The "Speak" button may not be available unless the active
window contains a program that supports recognition. That
is why you need to start Word.)

If you select text, clicking "Speak Text" will "read" the
selection, otherwise it will "read" the document beginning at
the current insertion point.

If any of these steps fails, search WINDOWS XP "Help and
Support" (StartHelp and Support) for "text to speech" - see
the article on "Text to speech overview".
--
Regards,
Pat Garard
Melbourne, Australia
_______________________

"jayratch" wrote in message
...
I noticed a text to speech feature in Excel 2003, so I tried to use it in
word. I clicked Speech in the Tools menu and got a dialogue about speech
recognition. That does me no good, I can type better than I can speak at
the
moment.

Will word actually output speech, or do I actually need to copy-paste text
into Excel for that? There must be a setting I missed because I can't
imagine putting a reading feature in the numbers program but not the words
program. But the help system told me nothing, I think it's very excited
about the speech to text and that's great but I don't need it.

Any idea where the setting is to make it talk?

I've been using word since 1993, and I've had computers that talk since
1986, but never those two on the same machine.