Okay, I am now in a position to comment impartially regarding the use of DPI 15 in conjunction with different Office suite apps, in particular, Microsoft Word, Outlook and Excel.

First of all, I tried the hot fix that everyone is raving on about for Office 2007.  Unfortunately, it did not work in this case and I was still getting the redraw problems, the Phantom insertion points and the jumping cursor.  Microsoft Word, Outlook & Excel came up without focus when called up.  The hot fix may have cured Office 2010 in some departments but it did not fix Office 2007.  I also believe there will not be a patch in the pipeline for Office 2007.

I believe the reason for this is because some Microsoft products are being discontinued this year.  One of them is Microsoft Office 2007.  Support for this product will end in October this year along with Windows Vista in April so why would Nuance bother introducing a patch?  Have a read on the link below.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/when-will-microsoft-pull-the-plug-on-your-version-of-windows-or-office/

I have since upgraded to Office 2016 on 2 of my other PCs.

Since upgrading to this version, the redraw problems, Phantom insertion points & jumping cursor have all disappeared.

When initially opening Microsoft Outlook, Word or Excel 2016, they all still come up without focus.  It does on my laptop anyway and I’m assuming it will do on my desktop,  I haven’t tried that yet.  Perhaps Nuance when they bring out the next version, will have cured the focus problem in Office 2016.

Therefore my initial advice albeit may not be to your liking, is upgrade to the latest version of Office because I don’t think it is going to get any better with the lower versions.  It seems that most apps are  gradually positioning themselves towards the cloud.

Cheers

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Tiger Feet

| DPG 15.61 | KnowBrainer 2017 | Windows 10 Professional /64 Bit | Intel® Core™ i9 Ten-Core Processor i9-10900K (3.7GHz) 20MB Cache |  32GB RAM. | 250GB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe SSD (up to 3500MB/R, 2300MB/W) Boot Drive | 1TB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe SSD (up to 3500MB/R, 3300MB/W) Storage Drive | Sennheiser D10 USB Wireless Microphone

Tiger,

It doesn't matter what version of Microsoft Office you're using (i.e. 2013 or 2016 specifically), if you bypass the default startup screen(s) all Office apps will open without focus. However, if you reenable the default startup screen, you can select "Blank document" if you want to create a new document wherein the new document screen will open in focus. From the default startup screen, you can say "open other documents" (Microsoft Word) or "open other workbooks" (Microsoft Excel), and you can navigate by voice command using say-what-you-seetm (menu tracking) to track to any save documents, and then just say "enter". That is, you can use "tab", "down #" or "up #", yada yada yada.

I've been doing this since Microsoft Office 2013.

However, I don't not disagree with you that this is something Nuance should fix. Nevertheless, you can work around this by doing the above.

Chuck

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is." - Yogi Berra

-------------------------

VoiceComputer: the only global speech interface.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed in this post are my own and do not reflect those of VoiceTeach LLC.

Chuck Runquist
VoiceComputer technical support

Chuck,

Even if I re-enable the default start-up screen, when I open Word or Excel, the start-up screen itself comes up without focus so this makes the process even more cumbersome.

However, I don't particularly want the start-up screen to open when I open Word or Excel. All I want is what I had before and that is a blank document come up immediately without the start-up screen.

I still maintain that when I was using DNS 13 and Microsoft Word 2007, when I opened a blank document in this instance, it came up in focus.

Considering that Office 2016 is the latest of its kind, you would think that DPI 15 would be compatible in bringing up a blank document in focus as Dragon did with past versions of its kind. This is something in my opinion that Nuance needs to address in their next version.

Cheers

-------------------------

Tiger Feet

| DPG 15.61 | KnowBrainer 2017 | Windows 10 Professional /64 Bit | Intel® Core™ i9 Ten-Core Processor i9-10900K (3.7GHz) 20MB Cache |  32GB RAM. | 250GB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe SSD (up to 3500MB/R, 2300MB/W) Boot Drive | 1TB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe SSD (up to 3500MB/R, 3300MB/W) Storage Drive | Sennheiser D10 USB Wireless Microphone

Tiger Feet
as I have posted before, when opening Word, Outlook or Excel in Office 2010 the window is not in focus and I say "Mouseclick" and focus is regained. you can also do it manually with your mouse. Whether this worked in Office 2007 I don't know as my Office 2007 is still on my Win XP machine with Dragon 11.

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Jomark

 

DPI 15.61, KB2017, SpeechStart+, MS Office 2019 Professional, Windows 10 Pro

John,

Yes I know I can point my SmartNav at a newly opened blank document and say "Mouseclick" to bring it up in focus but the point is I shouldn't have to.

This was not the case in earlier versions of Dragon when working with different versions of Office.  This phenomenon has only reared its ugly head since DPI 15 has been around.

Cheers

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Tiger Feet

| DPG 15.61 | KnowBrainer 2017 | Windows 10 Professional /64 Bit | Intel® Core™ i9 Ten-Core Processor i9-10900K (3.7GHz) 20MB Cache |  32GB RAM. | 250GB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe SSD (up to 3500MB/R, 2300MB/W) Boot Drive | 1TB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe SSD (up to 3500MB/R, 3300MB/W) Storage Drive | Sennheiser D10 USB Wireless Microphone

Tiger,

What can I tell you? I don't have that problem and I don't have a problem with Microsoft Office 2007 either. Everything on all my systems works as it should. Yes, if you bring up a blank document, lack of focus is an issue that Nuance has to deal with. However, if I use the default start up screens in Office 2013/365 (2016), I have no problems navigating by voice command and blank documents come up in focus.

I also don't have any problems other than focus relative to Office 2007. No line overlapping, no jumping cursor, no read/write issues period.

My Office 2013 is running under Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit with DPI 15, my Office 365 (2016) is running under Windows 10 as is my Office 2007.

Long and the short of it is I don't have your problem in any case. The question is why do you have the problem and why do I not? Also, there is absolutely no reason for me to provide you with any kind of false information on this issue because if I were having the problem, I would be joining the rant. If I were experiencing these types of problems, I would be the first one to go directly to Nuance and report them. I can work around some things that are known issues with DPI 15, but if it didn't work like I say it does for me, it's of no use and I would be jumping back to previous version.

Chuck

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is." - Yogi Berra

-------------------------

VoiceComputer: the only global speech interface.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed in this post are my own and do not reflect those of VoiceTeach LLC.

Chuck Runquist
VoiceComputer technical support

Chuck,

I'm really pleased that you don't have that problem but I do. I also have no reason to provide you or anyone else with any kind of false information on the issue. That's why the title of this thread mentions an impartial view on DPI 15.

The fact is, by me upgrading to Office 2016, this has eliminated the redraw problems, the phantom insertion points and the jumping cursor that were consistent in Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Word 2007 & 2010.

The fact is, you stated above that you need to use the start-up screen first to avoid blank documents coming up without focus.

The fact is, you should be able to bring up a new blank document in focus without bringing up the start-up screen first which in my opinion is another unwanted, avoidable step.

The fact is, when I used DNS 13 and Microsoft Office 2007, when I brought up a blank document, it came up in focus. There was also no start-up screen needed to be pulled up first making the step quicker and more productive.

The fact is, since I have started to use DPI 15 with Office 2016, neither Word, Outlook or Excel come up in focus. I could understand if it was just one of these apps but it is all 3.

The fact is, the focus problem only started when DPI 15 was used in conjunction with Microsoft Word, Outlook, Excel 2007, 2010 (don't know about 2013) & now in my case I can confirm 2016.

Go figure!

Cheers

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Tiger Feet

| DPG 15.61 | KnowBrainer 2017 | Windows 10 Professional /64 Bit | Intel® Core™ i9 Ten-Core Processor i9-10900K (3.7GHz) 20MB Cache |  32GB RAM. | 250GB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe SSD (up to 3500MB/R, 2300MB/W) Boot Drive | 1TB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe SSD (up to 3500MB/R, 3300MB/W) Storage Drive | Sennheiser D10 USB Wireless Microphone

Tiger,

I understand. And, I'm not questioning what you're saying. I have no doubt about the accuracy of what you're reporting.

I have tried the best I can to report some of these issues that you're reporting to Nuance. The problem is whether or not they will, in fact, even listen. Since DPI 15 is a completely new version of Dragon, totally unrelated to previous versions, there are bound to be these kinds of issues because speech recognition is probably the most complex application anyone will ever use.

I concur with you. Go figure!!!

Chuck

"Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see." -- Mark Twain

-------------------------

VoiceComputer: the only global speech interface.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed in this post are my own and do not reflect those of VoiceTeach LLC.

Chuck Runquist
VoiceComputer technical support

I'm wondering if this focus problem could be rectified by changing a registry entry as could the same problem be rectified in Notepad a while back?

Cheers

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Tiger Feet

| DPG 15.61 | KnowBrainer 2017 | Windows 10 Professional /64 Bit | Intel® Core™ i9 Ten-Core Processor i9-10900K (3.7GHz) 20MB Cache |  32GB RAM. | 250GB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe SSD (up to 3500MB/R, 2300MB/W) Boot Drive | 1TB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe SSD (up to 3500MB/R, 3300MB/W) Storage Drive | Sennheiser D10 USB Wireless Microphone

Tiger,

Anything is possible. I remember back in one version of Dragon where smart quotes (curly quotes) required modification to the vocabulary entries for Quotation Marks. Next version of Dragon fixed this problem. Although I've long since forgotten, there was another issue in one version of Dragon relative to Microsoft Office (current at that time) that was fixed in a subsequent patch. However, since Nuance is bound and determined to proceed along its newly defined path, it's not either easy or possible to predict what they know or where they're going with these types of issues.

Some of the most significant contacts that I've had the past with Dragon developers are gone. On the other hand, some of them that have been with Dragon since Dragon Systems are still there. Nevertheless, getting information is much more difficult now than it was in the past. I placed the onus directly on the upper level administration at Nuance for making information scarce.

The bottom line is that I don't like it anymore than you do. There are also times when I get extremely frustrated with some of the things I see that occur in DPI 15 that didn't occur for me in either DPI 14 or DNS 13 Professional.

That being said, there are circumstances where DPI 15 works much better than in previous versions. Regardless, it's the newness of the approach using Deep Learning and moving forward in that direction that seems to be problematic some users and under some circumstances. For me, I much prefer using DPI 15 and I have found many ways of working around certain issues.

I think that all we can do is hope that issues users are having get to some point of resolution.

Chuck

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is." - Yogi Berra



-------------------------

VoiceComputer: the only global speech interface.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed in this post are my own and do not reflect those of VoiceTeach LLC.

Chuck Runquist
VoiceComputer technical support

I tried Lindsay's registry hack hoping that it would cure the focus issue in Office 2016 but unfortunately, it did not work.

Cheers

-------------------------

Tiger Feet

| DPG 15.61 | KnowBrainer 2017 | Windows 10 Professional /64 Bit | Intel® Core™ i9 Ten-Core Processor i9-10900K (3.7GHz) 20MB Cache |  32GB RAM. | 250GB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe SSD (up to 3500MB/R, 2300MB/W) Boot Drive | 1TB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe SSD (up to 3500MB/R, 3300MB/W) Storage Drive | Sennheiser D10 USB Wireless Microphone

PLAN B
Have you considered creating a blank Microsoft Word template and dropping it on your desktop. You could name it something like Template or even Word and rather than launching Microsoft Word, simply say <Start, Open or Launch> Template which will open your blank document/template and Microsoft Word, if it isn't already open. Kill 2 birds with one stone...

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Lunis,

Not quite sure what you are suggesting. I have no trouble in opening Microsoft Word instantly without the start-up screen. This is quite easy to do in the Word Options.

File > Options | Then under the 'General' tab, Uncheck the 'Show the Start screen when this application starts' box.

What I really want is to have Microsoft Word, Excel & Outlook 2016 come up in focus. Have you got a cure for that?

I can now also confirm that the focus problem is the same with my desktop computer which is brand-new!

Cheers

-------------------------

Tiger Feet

| DPG 15.61 | KnowBrainer 2017 | Windows 10 Professional /64 Bit | Intel® Core™ i9 Ten-Core Processor i9-10900K (3.7GHz) 20MB Cache |  32GB RAM. | 250GB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe SSD (up to 3500MB/R, 2300MB/W) Boot Drive | 1TB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe SSD (up to 3500MB/R, 3300MB/W) Storage Drive | Sennheiser D10 USB Wireless Microphone

You might try opening a template or blank document, as outlined in the previous post, to hopefully open your template in focus. We can't guarantee it will be in focus because we simply don't have this issue. Our best guess is that you have a utility that is stealing focus but it might be a utility you need. If opening a template doesn't open the template in focus, you can always write a command to open a specific document/template and then add SendKeys "%{Tab}" to switch to the previous window. If Microsoft Word occasionally opens in focus, SendKeys "%{Tab}" might not be a good idea because it will switch to a different application but you can alternatively program a mouseclick into the center of your document.

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Have you got exact instructions on how I do this?

The thing is, I never had to do this at all when I was using DNS 13 with Office 2007.

I don't want to go back to DNS 13 because DPI 15 does have its good points and I would rather go forwards than backwards.

Cheers

-------------------------

Tiger Feet

| DPG 15.61 | KnowBrainer 2017 | Windows 10 Professional /64 Bit | Intel® Core™ i9 Ten-Core Processor i9-10900K (3.7GHz) 20MB Cache |  32GB RAM. | 250GB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe SSD (up to 3500MB/R, 2300MB/W) Boot Drive | 1TB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe SSD (up to 3500MB/R, 3300MB/W) Storage Drive | Sennheiser D10 USB Wireless Microphone

Let's try a quick easy approach. Begin by saving any document, such as a blank document, to your Windows desktop and naming your document something like “Begin”. Now say Start Begin or Open Again to open your “Begin” document. It won't matter if Microsoft Word is open or not. If Microsoft Word is not open, opening your document will open Word automatically. If you can dictate into your document, noted by the green dot in your DragonBar, you are good to go. However, if your document is out of focus, you can probably say MouseGrid 5 click to bring your document into focus. If you have to do this every time, you might consider creating a Dragon Advanced-Scripting command such as the following. Note that you will need a longer wait time if you are launching Microsoft Word:

End Sub
HeardWord "start","begin"
Wait 1
HeardWord "MouseGrid","5"
HeardWord "click"
Sub Main

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Dragon/Sales@KnowBrainer.com 
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I have been using DPI 15 for about 6 weeks and I'm delighted with it. It's fair to say that my requirements are probably quite limited compared with many people at this forum. I am using Office 2010 and most of my dictation is in Outlook, Word and several forums including KnowBrainer. I do not achieve focus without a mouse click (although if I open Google focus is there), but aside from that I have no problems. Initially I experienced some line overlapping and occasional jumping cursor in Outlook, but since downloading the Nuance fix there have been no further problems.

The accuracy I am achieving with DPI 15 is very good: definitely better than DNS Premium 12.5 which I was using before. The ability of DPI 15 to intuitively select the right words, numbers display, etc in ambivalent situations is excellent. About the same time as installing DPI 15 I purchased a Sennheiser MB Pro1 UC headset from Lunis (having been using a VXi BlueParrottT TalkPro B1000-USB headset) and no doubt this is also helping with dictation accuracy.

Having been reading about the problems with DPI 15 and Office 2010 I had been anticipating that I might need to move to Office 365 / Office 2016. However, so far my experience has been that this is not yet necessary.

A quick word about the Sennheiser MB Pro1 UC headset. Researching online will give you all the technical information, but suffice to say I am really pleased with it. The VXI BlueParrott was pretty good, but just not on the same level as the Sennheiser. It is lightweight, comfortable, positioning of the boom microphone seems to be less critical (this is probably down to DPI 15 I suspect), noise cancellation is excellent, and battery life goes on and on. There is a nice lady resident in the earpiece who informs me about the state of charge and whether I am connected to the dongle. Two comments - both minor - are firstly that the leatherette earpiece is just a little 'slippery' which means that if I lean forward it tends to want to slide off my ear despite trying different adjustments of the headband. Secondly, Lunis suggested quite correctly in the helpful setup guide he suppliers with the headset that the dongle should be plugged into one of the direct USB ports on the rear of my desktop computer rather than one of the ports on the front. I found that sometimes the headset would not pair with the dongle in this position, possibly because it is in with a 'clutter' of other USB ports in use. Utilising a USB port on the front the computer resolved the pairing problem and there is no apparent reduction in performance.

In summary, the MB Pro1 UC is quite expensive, but assuming it lasts well I will consider it money well spent.

Jeremy

Jeremy,

Actually your understanding of USB ports is not quite correct. Yes, under certain conditions you can get away with plugging a microphone into the front ports (USB) on your desktop system. However, where you can run into problems is related to, for example, if you use the front ports for anything that absolutely requires a dedicated hardware interrupt. One example would be to plug something else, such as a wireless mouse dongle into the front USB ports. Since frontside USB ports on a desktop system uses one hardware interrupt to support multiple devices or USB inputs, control can be taken over by one of these and not relinquish to your microphone. On the other hand, the reason we recommend USB ports on the backside of the desktop system is because these ports all have their own individual hardware interrupt. Most desktop systems have from 4 to 6 USB ports, each of which is assigned an individual hardware interrupt.

The bottom line is that if there are no conflicts with two devices or inputs requiring access at the same time through the front USB ports, then your microphone will work properly. But, the moment that one requires a dedicated interrupt, it can steal it from your microphone input.

Regardless, if it works and until it doesn't work, you can sometimes get away with using the front USB ports for your USB sound card & microphone. The only problem that users run into usually is that when it fails, they forget the reason and pull their hair out trying to figure out what's going on. Therefore, if you can avoid using the USB ports on the front side of your desktop system, it is recommended that you do so.

Chuck

"It's not important to know, it's important to learn how to find out." - Robert Thorndike renowned 20th-century psychologist

-------------------------

VoiceComputer: the only global speech interface.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed in this post are my own and do not reflect those of VoiceTeach LLC.

Chuck Runquist
VoiceComputer technical support

Thanks Chuck - useful information. I can easily imagine running into a problem in the future and failing to realise why. Jeremy