Ladies and gentlemen… drum rolls. Excel can talk! 

Microsoft Excel is one of the world’s most popular spreadsheet applications. Besides allowing you to input, analyze, visualize, and transform your data, it can also say out the content of your cell with its text-to-speech capability.

In this post, we’ll show you how to use Excel’s text-to-speech feature, but first, let’s look at how to set it up.

Setup Speak for Excel

To add speak text to your Excel follow these steps:

1. Open Microsoft Excel desktop
2. Click on file and scroll down till you find options.
3. Click on Options. The Excel Options dialog box gets displayed.
4. Click on Quick Access Toolbar.
   
   
5. Use the dropdown, and change Popular Commands to Commands Not in the Ribbon.
   
   
6. Scroll down the commands list and click on Speak Cells. The commands are listed alphabetically.
7. Click on Add. Likewise, scroll Stop Speaking and add as well.
8. Click on Ok.

You should find the Speak Cells in the Quick Access Toolbar of your Excel Ribbon area.

How to Use Excel’s Speak Cells

1. In a new worksheet, input some data in some cells. It could be dates, text, or numbers. 
2. Select the cells and click on Speak Cells.
3. You can use the stop speaking by clicking on Stop Speaking.

Giving Excel a voice

The speaker’s voice is made by Windows Text to Speech system. You can choose your preferred voice by making the necessary setting adjustment in your control panel. 

1. Open Control Panel.
2. Using the search box on the right corner, search for Speech Recognition.
   
   
3. Click on Text to Speech settings.
4. Use the voice selection dropdown to pick a voice.
5. Preview voice by clicking on Preview Voice.
   
   
6. Use the linear scale to adjust the voice speed.
7. Click on Ok.

Head over to Excel and watch the new setting take effect.