Dragon speech recognition software acts like an umbrella, hovering above all of your applications and trying to give you coverage wherever you see a text field. When it’s not fully compatible, the dictation box pops up allowing you to perform a glorified “copy and paste” in order to make it usable. Being so integral across-the-board, install and voice files can take up quite a bit of space, which means that file management is quite critical.
One of the most important things to realise when you have Dragon Professional Individual or higher is that there’s an option to save recorded speech alongside documentation. In the Options section you will find a drop-down menu which gives you the opportunity to decide how you want to store additional recorded dictation: select Always, Ask Me or Never when it comes to taking this action.
If you elect Always, you can expect your computer to fill up quite quickly with sound information unless you manually delete these accompanying files yourself. While useful, this option is not recommended because if you aren’t deleting the recorded dictation once you’ve applied the changes to a document things can stack up quite radically. We’ve had a few clients whose machines have become clogged up because this selection was incorrect, which is why we always advise Ask Me or Never.
Selecting Ask Me ensures that Dragon always checks with you before you save recorded dictation alongside a document, while Never simply means that once you have completed your document, you won’t be able to open it again and hear what you said previously. This selection is incredibly useful for people wanting to return to work in progress, giving them the ability to act as though the information was just dictated. Without this function, it means that you won’t be able to listen back to a mis-recognised word to try and figure out what was said originally.
Reducing the amount of data that is collected makes it more efficient, streamlined and is just a good principle to abide by in most situations when it comes to computing and life. If your computer has filled up to the brim with voice recording information, get in touch so we can assist.