Text-to-speech (TTS) is the ability of your computer to play back written text as spoken words. Depending upon your configuration and installed TTS engines, you can hear most text that appears on your screen in Word 2010, Outlook 2010, PowerPoint 2010 and OneNote 2010.

Enable text-to-speech

Speak is a built-in feature of Word 2010, Outlook 2010, PowerPoint 2010 and OneNote 2010, in the language of your version of Office. For example, if you are using the English version of Office 2010, the English TTS engine is automatically installed.

Add Speak to the Quick Access Toolbar

You can add the Speak command to your Quick Access Toolbar by following these steps:

1. Next to the Quick Access Toolbar, click Customize Quick Access Toolbar:

2. Click More Commands.
3. In the Choose commands from list, select All Commands.
4. Scroll down to the Speak command, select it, and then click Add.
5. Click OK.
6. When you want to use the text-to-speech command, click the icon on theQuick Access Toolbar.

Convert text to speech

After you have added the Speak command to your Quick Access Tool, you can hear single words or blocks of text spoken by highlighting the text you want to hear, and then clicking the Speak command.

Source: microsoft