Can pages read text aloud?

I read your post and tried it in Pages 09. Just select the text you want to hear and Right Click to get the context menu. Speech is near the bottom of the resulting menu list. Personally I was quite impressed - not too different to some narrations you get on the radio 🙂

I thought Pages could speak selected text, but I can't find the ability. I suggest you leave feedback for the Pages team regarding this. You can find it under the Pages menu > Provide Pages Feedback. That takes you to the same page as this link.

In the meantime, TextEdit can read text, so you could copy & paste the text into a TextEdit document, select all, then go to Edit > Speech > Start Speaking.

I Ctrl clicked on a word in Pages and can choose Speech > Start speaking. Is that what you are looking for?

Pages doesn't have a setting for that. It is a system wide setting. Look in System preferences, the 4th row you have Universal Access and Speach. I am not familiar with them but if you read in the Help, Mac Help, you'll find out what to do.

It is in the contextual menu (right-click/control-click) on selected text.

In Leopard and earlier, there was a Service that could read text in almost any application. I don't see it in the Snow Leopard Services Preferences, although it does exist at /System/Library/Services/SpeechService.service. Is anyone else able to use this service in Snow Leopard?

I do not have speech as an option in Services in Snow Leopard. It does not appear at all in the list of commands I can activate.

I'm not sure why, but I didn't try right-clicking in Pages, but Speech is available then.

It is also:

+Menu > Pages > Services > Speech > Start Speaking Text+

For a laugh get it to speak the Ipsum Facto.

Peter

Peggy

Possibly part of Word Services?

I do have a couple of other Service sets installed, and it is also possible the Services came with another application.

Peter

I can't find speech in the Services either. It is a system feature.

I've had WordService installed since iWork '05. I do not have it installed on my G5 iMac & I do not have speech as an option in Pages '09 in Leopard 10.5.8 on that iMac.