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Less Pain, More Work: Add Contacts to Email Faster Using Dragon Naturally Speaking

In this Dragon NaturallySpeaking Tutorial, I show how to convert an email into contact in Microsoft Outlook. If you are in a hurry, you may want to skip to the YouTube video listed below directly and then return to this blog post for further clarifications.



In my earlier blog post, I had shown a fairly tedious way to add contacts in Microsoft Outlook. The method includes bringing up the Add Contacts dialogue box and then manually entering the name and email. There is a faster way to do this if you received an email from the sender you want to add contacts. For this,

  1. Open the Email from the sender,
  2. do a Mouse Right Click on the name of the sender,
  3. then select the option of "Add to Contacts" in the drop-down menu
  4. Add Contacts dialogue box will be brought up which will automatically copy the sender's name and email address. You can add more data if needed.
  5. Click "Save and Close".

In order to achieve the same functionality using Dragon Naturally Speaking, we will have to somehow position the mouse on the name of the sender. We can do this using the mouse navigation commands as described in this blog post. However, this again is tedious.

A faster way to do this is to leverage the power of macros in speech recognition. We will create a macro which will record the position of the mouse when it is placed over the sender's name. Now whenever we open another email from a different sender, the sender's name will always be at the same position assuming that we are always opening the email in a maximised window. This will also work if the window is always open at the same position and is of the same size. This is often true if you do not change your Windows in Outlook settings and do not actively the size or move your Windows when you open the email. Once this is done, you simply have to activate the macro using a voice command and then follow the steps 3-5.

In order to create the macro, we use a software called KnowBrainer. This is a third party software built on top of Dragon NaturallySpeaking.  In order to create the macro, we will use a knowbrainer command called "New Mouse Command <name of macro>".

Once the macros created, you can quickly add the contacts from email by activating the macro using the voice command and then follow the steps 3 - 5.

I hope you find this useful. 

Speech recognition can help you automate tasks on your computer thereby reducing the time and by extension, reducing your risk of computer injury.

If you have any questions on the purchase and usage of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, feel free to leave your comments in the section below and I will respond as quickly as possible.

About Dragon NaturallySpeaking:

Dragon NaturallySpeaking is the most popular speech recognition software on PC. Dragon Dictate is the counterpart of Dragon NaturallySpeaking on Apple Macintosh computers.

At the time of writing this blog post, Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional Individual 15 is the recommended version for most users. However, I continue to use Dragon NaturallySpeaking premium 13 because of its incompatibility with Natlink.  You can download Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional Individual 15 here.








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