Voice control Will not work in pages

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Level 1

9 points

Voice control Will not work in pages

I have two Mac minis(1) late 2018 core i7 with 32 gig RAM and (2) 2014 with core i7 with 16 Gig RAM and a late 2014 MacBook Pro retina and voice control in Pages will not work. I can click out of Pages and voice control works fine. All three machines is running IOS 10.15.2 and the Pages version in 8.2.1. I tried reinstalling the IOS and removing and reinstalling Pages from the App Store and nothing works. This is very frustrating and I am sure it is a bug in Pages that is causing the Voice Control to ignore any command or dictation while Pages has the focus. It have used System Diagnostics to check all machines and there is nothing wrong with them. This is the 3rd post I have put up about this problem. I thought I had it solved after formatting the Hard drive and installing the IOS, Voice control worked for a very short time and then quit. I know when it stops working because the Voice Control commands window with close without being told to do so. When that happens Voice Control no longer works in Pages. If anyone has any ideas please let me know. Thanks

Mac mini, macOS 10.15

Posted on Jan 11, 2020 6:26 AM

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Answer 1

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jbobo003 Author

Level 1

9 points

Feb 21, 2020 3:27 PM in response to Dvd96753

I have it working great. I just kept working with it and installed Microsoft word. I don't know what the install of Word had to do with it but now Dictation is working in Pages, Keynote, and Numbers with no problems. I don't use word but I'm afraid to uninstall it. Go figure!

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Answer 2

Jan 11, 2020 6:46 AM in response to jbobo003

And yet, in my clean installed Catalina 10.15.2, and Pages v8.2.1, Voice Control dictation works with Pages. The only issue is just how poor Voice Control is at speech recognition, but that has nothing to do with Pages itself. Ensure that you have no anti-virus, or other conflict inducement software installed during the use of Voice Control.

Suggest that you boot into Safe Boot mode. Press and hold the shift key on a reboot until you see the progress bar. This will be slower and may exhibit (normal) graphics anomalies. Check if Voice Control works with Pages there. Then reboot normally, and try it again with Pages.

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Answer 3

jbobo003 Author

Level 1

9 points

Jan 11, 2020 10:44 AM in response to VikingOSX

OK that sounded good to me and that's the one thing I hadn't tried. I booted into safe mode, verified it was in safe and then open pages and tried it. It worked for a little while and then boom the commands window went and voice control would not respond while in Pages. I can manually click out of Pages and put the focus on anything else and it works as advertised. Reboot back into normal, started Pages, dictated about a paragraph and the same thing happened. I do not have any antivirus running, nor anything special showing up in my Activity Monitor. I have tried Dragon for Mac but it is useless it is so buggy and now Nuance is no longer supporting Dragon Speech engine for Mac. I hate to but it looks like I am going to have to find a different word processor app, Not MS Word, but another one, if I can't solve this problem.

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Answer 4

jbobo003 Author

Level 1

9 points

Jan 13, 2020 6:40 AM in response to VikingOSX

I disable Siri in system preferences and re-booted with no success. I opened activity monitor and I noticed that I have Dropbox cloud services running so I disabled Dropbox still no differences. I disabled dictation and voice control in system preferences, shut down the machine, left it off for about five minutes, re-booted the machine, in abled Voice control and dictation, issued to command, "Open Pages" and the command window closed and nothing happens in pages. The microphone hey still wiggling when I am attempting to dictate in pages but nothing happens. Looked in the activity monitor and the Siri Service is not running. I'm beginning to think it's something to do with this new Mac mini because everything seems to be working fine on my old Mac mini it just happens a lot slower.

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Answer 5

jbobo003 Author

Level 1

9 points

Jan 13, 2020 3:07 PM in response to VikingOSX

Thanks for your ideas and taking the time to offer them. I down loaded MS Word something I hated to do but I did and voice control and dictate works fine in it. I just hate MS Word and would prefer to use Pages.

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Answer 6

Dvd96753

Level 1

8 points

Feb 18, 2020 2:25 PM in response to jbobo003

I have exactly the same problem. I am running Catalina 15.3 Voice Control/dictation simply doesn't work when using the Pages.

I have had to resort to using TextEdit app to cut and paste into my pages documents. Although this works it's not the most elegant of solutions/ get rounds...

I have just tested dictation in the Libra Office app. as I refuse to have anything to do with Microsoft. It's slower than using TextEdit with a significant pause before the text displays after each phrase, but at least it works.

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Answer 7

Dvd96753

Level 1

8 points

Feb 21, 2020 10:17 AM in response to Dvd96753

Update to my last post above: A slightly better workaround but one that has significant dangers!

if I open a new Pages document and try to dictate using voice control I get no text appearing in the pages document.

I then save this document (empty of text at this point) and close it but do not Close the Pages App yet.

I then open a new TextEdit Document, dictate using voice control then either close or minimize the document when I have finished. I then open the saved (as empty) Pages document; all the text I have dictated into the Text Edit document is now in the Pages document.

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Although this can be a useful workaround it has significant dangers.

It would be possible to complete a 'perfect' finished Pages document, save it. If, however the App itself is not 'Closed' and you dictate in to a TextEdit document (not related to the pages document) this additional TextEdit text will appear unwittingly in the previously saved Pages document.

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Answer 8

Mar 30, 2020 5:07 PM in response to jbobo003

The issue with Voice Control and Pages 8.2.1 occurs when the Format > Style area is showing in the document window. Once you select a font from the pop-menu Voice Control no longer accepts dictation or commands when using U.S. English as your language. This also occurs in later versions of Keynote and Numbers. Hiding the controls that contain the font pop-up menu is the easiest way to work around the issue until Apple releases a fix.

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