Using Microsoft Natural voices with built-in TTS

Anki Help
1

My cards have been using Microsoft Julie and Microsoft Paul for the longest time. They are defined in the template as:

Microsoft_Julie:French
Microsoft_Paul:French

However, I would like to use the voices Microsoft Denise (Natural) and Microsoft Henri (Natural). Is this possible? I tried Microsoft_Denise(Natural):French but it did not work.

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Click on Add, then click on the Cards… button.

In the Front Template, just paste {{tts-voices:}}

In the Front Preview, you will see a list of TTS voices available to you, and the right format for specifying them.

(Actually, some of the voices appear twice in this listing… a bug?)

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Wow, thank you. It’s been so long since I created these templates that I didn’t even know it could suggest things like that.

Unfortunately it seems the natural voices aren’t available, even though they are installed and work with Microsoft Narrator. At least I know it’s not possible now, so I really appreciate your help. :+1:

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[Note: the below is for Windows 11. In Windows 10 the interface might be a bit different.]

In Settings / Time & language / Language & region, I selected “Language options” from the … menu for English (United States).

Then for Text-to-speech I clicked on the “>” next to Installed. That brought up the Accessibility > Narrator page, with the option to “Add natural voices”. Clicking on the Add button brought up a dialog for English but also a link to “Choose a different language”.

Maybe if you explore this you might be able to install some additional natural voices for French. When I switched to French, I saw entries for Henri (Natural) and Denise (Natural) and installed them.

Edit: Hmm, never mind. The newly installed voices don’t show up in the {{tts-voices:}} listing.

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Yes, I have had Henri (Natural) and Denise (Natural) installed in Windows and working with Narrator for a few days, but as you noted, they don’t show up as available in the Anki template preview.

I’m just grateful your answer made it clear they aren’t available otherwise I’d probably still be trying to figure out a workaround. :blush:

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