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Dictating and typing

What we call Full Text Control allows you to use your voice to perform direct dictation, selection, correction and cursor movement within text. You can say things like Bold <word>, Insert before <word>, and Select <text>.

Dragon for Mac 5 supports Full Text Control in nearly every application, but for some, we need a special command, Cache Document.

Microsoft Word 2011, Microsoft Word 2016, and TextEdit allow you to mix talking and typing because those applications allow Dragon to see what you're doing by hand, so we can keep track of where things are on screen.

Other applications don't tell Dragon about changes you make by hand, and it can seem like Dragon is confused as to where the cursor is. Let's say you're using Apple Pages. After dictating a paragraph, you move the cursor manually and type a sentence. At this point, Dragon thinks the cursor is where Dragon left it, not where you just moved it. Just say Cache Document and Dragon will "reread" the document and sync up again.

About the Cache

When you say Cache document, you're telling Dragon to read the whole document's contents. When it does this, several things happen:

  • Dragon forgets what it entered in this document.
  • Dragon throws away its recordings of your voice, so using Correction on existing text is no longer possible.
  • Dragon reads all of the document's text from scratch.

To start over completely, say Purge Cache. Dragon forgets what it entered in this document, and rather than reading the document again, it assumes the document is empty.

How to talk and type

Are you using Microsoft Word 2011, Microsoft Word 2016 (Dragon for Mac 5 only), or TextEdit?

Yes: You can mix dictation and typing. These applications tell Dragon when the cursor moves so we stay in sync.

No: Go to the next question.

Did you mix talking and typing or manually move the cursor with the mouse/trackpad?

Yes: Every time you manually move the cursor, either by typing or by mouse/trackpad, say the command Cache Document.

No: You can continue to edit by voice.

This is a function of an application responding to Dragon asking "Where is the cursor, and was any text added, deleted, or moved?" If an application simply doesn't reply, we need Cache Document to allow us to read and sync with the page.