Save Windows Speech Recognition file of dictionary

[pcRat]

Is there a Windows Speech Recognition data file, training file, or other file — that I can save a copy to a jump drive before doing a clean install on this computer. To reinsert after new install. Just to save time without retraining

Maybe just saving the speech recognition dictionary file will do it.
Which would also allow me to use the file on other computers as well!

 

[Coke Robot]

If you go to the Windows folder, you'll see a folder titled Speech. It seems to hold some files related to that obviously. You can try copying and pasting your current Speech folder to a different PC and tinker around with that to see if it works.

 

[pcRat]

There's a file called Custom in the Uproof folder but it's blank. User\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Uproof

From what I've read that's for Word but I don't have Word on this computer. I did have the 60 day trial but removed it.

It seems logical for MS to share one dictionary for Office, Works, Windows per user.

 

[DavidY]

I've just had a play with this.

What I did was to take some old-school-MSDOS DIR runs on the C: drive (piped to a file) and used freebie utility KDiff3 to see which files changed before and after. This is a rather empirical approach with no understanding whatsoever of how the software actually works.

In the speech recognition software there is an right-click option to Open the Speech Dictionary, and from there you can add and change words.

These seem to go into a small dat file in
C:\Users\<Username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Speech\Files\UserLexicons

There's also
C:\Users\<Username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Speech\Files\UserShortcuts
in the same area which I guess has some other specific speech info.

The other folders which changed (and seemed relevant) were:

C:\Users\<Username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Speech\Files\MSASR
and
C:\Users\<Username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Speech\Files\TrainingAudio

This latter one seemed to be populated as I was going through the tutorial, and holds a .wav file of everything I said to it! The MSASR folder has some fairly big files in there so I'm guessing it holds most of the information.

It's possible that other files/folders are used which weren't so obviously named!

No idea if you can copy these folders across PCs though.

Incidentally by listening back to the .wavs in TrainingAudio I found out how bad the microphone (or possibly sound driver) on this laptop is; there's a constant buzz in the background so I'm pretty impressed the Speech Recognition worked as well as it did.

 

[pcRat]

DavidY— Thank you very much for your time.
It seems I'm missing the Training Audio file. I tried to open the others with notepad but it looks like they might be encrypted. Their filenames are in red.


These seem to go into a small dat file in SP_2536F7A16D3F44E88D3EA3F6581030F0
C:\Users\<Username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Speech\Files\UserLexicons

There's also SP_1BF95645E5974C958CDA92A02CD8C3B8
C:\Users\<Username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Speech\Files\UserShortcuts
in the same area which I guess has some other specific speech info.

The other folders which changed (and seemed relevant) were:

C:\Users\<Username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Speech\Files\MSASR
SP_1C405525640C42D8B6B21A5AA6A60A91
SP_3BE3CF91C5C74385BAA1F676ABC6210A
SP_7AE1C0DAF44B4D98A1FD38D940B47FF3
SP_234C32AC44C945EBA32C2EA0355D38D5
SP_71746BE5103E47868905EC04AF1F0C8B
SP_297342D33A84490CA223B93756577B80
SP_75979821794A4D8BB74659E6328D9822
SP_ACE6D64A3B6D4417AFA365FAB7B43EB7
　

and
Missing and this is one I have interest in C:\Users\<Username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Speech\Files\TrainingAudio

This latter one seemed to be populated as I was going through the tutorial, and holds a .wav file of everything I said to it! The MSASR folder has some fairly big files in there so I'm guessing it holds most of the information.

It's possible that other files/folders are used which weren't so obviously named!

No idea if you can copy these folders across PCs though.

Incidentally by listening back to the .wavs in TrainingAudio I found out how bad the microphone (or possibly sound driver) on this laptop is; there's a constant buzz in the background so I'm pretty impressed the Speech Recognition worked as well as it did.
I started out using an analog headset. Then USB headset plugged into computer. Now USB headset plugged into a self-powered USB hub. I also use it for MagicJack. Family & friends say it is much clearer and not so much background noise now.

 

[DavidY]

DavidY— Thank you very much for your time.
It seems I'm missing the Training Audio file. I tried to open the others with notepad but it looks like they might be encrypted.

Did you run through the Tutorial? I think that was what created the files in that folder.

I'm also not surprised that the .dat files don't open with Notepad. I guess they must somehow store sounds and the Notepad-friendly text format probably isn't the most efficient way to store sound information - I'd guess it's about efficiency rather than encryption.

 

[pcRat]

I'd only get the go through the tutorial on this after an upgrade from Windows 7.
Oh well, guess it is no big deal retraining after a clean install. At least now I know the trick to speed training voice recognition.
I took a snapshot of the speech dictionary and a lead a troublesome words immediately.

Again thank you for your help.
Ron