How to turn off the speech recognition and handwriting recognition features in Office XP (326526)

SUMMARY

Microsoft Office contains a speech recognition feature and a handwriting recognition feature.

You can use speech recognition to dictate text into any Office program. You can also select menu, toolbar, dialog box (U.S. English only), and task pane (U.S. English only) items by using your voice. Speech recognition is installed as part of a Typical or Complete installation of Office. If you perform a Custom installation, Office Setup installs the features as part of the Alternative User Input feature in the Office Shared Components.

Use handwriting recognition to enter text into any Microsoft Office program by writing instead of typing. You can write by using a mouse or by using a third-party handwriting input device. Office programs can automatically convert this input to typed text. In Microsoft Word and Microsoft Outlook (if Word is your e-mail editor), the input can be left as an "ink object" in your own handwriting. Handwriting recognition also supports a drawing function, so that you can include hand-drawn sketches in your Word document.

After you install Office XP and turn on speech recognition and handwriting recognition, these features become part of the operating system and cannot be removed--even if you remove the feature in Maintenance Mode of Office XP Setup.

This article explains how to turn off speech recognition and handwriting recognition.

back to the top

Remove the Features from the Office Installation

Warning If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can solve problems that result from using Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.
Note Because there are several versions of Microsoft Windows, the following steps may be different on your computer. If they are, see your product documentation to complete these steps.

1. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL, and then click Task Manager.
2. On the Processes tab, if CTFMON.EXE is in the list, click CTFMON.EXE, and then click End Process.
3. Close the Task Manager window.
4. Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
5. Double-click Add or Remove Programs.
6. Click Microsoft Office XP, and then click Change.
7. Click Add or Remove Features, and then click Next.
8. In the Features to install box, follow these steps:
   • Expand Microsoft Office.
     • Expand Microsoft Excel for Windows, click the symbol next to Text to Speech, and then click Not Available.
     • Expand Office Shared Features.
       • Expand Alternative User Input.
         • Click the symbol next to Speech, and then click Not Available.
         • Click the symbol next to Handwriting, and then click Not Available.
       • Expand Proofing Tools.
         • Expand French, click the symbol next to English - French Translation, and then click Not Available.
         • Expand Spanish, click the symbol next to English - Spanish Translation, and then click Not Available.
9. Click Update.
10. After the update is complete, click Start, and then click Run.
11. In the Open box, type regsvr32 /u msctf.dll, and then click OK. When you are prompted to acknowledge that the program succeeded, click OK.
12. Click Start, and then click Run.
13. In the Open box, type regedt32.exe, and then click OK.
14. Locate, and then click the following registry key:

    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\

15. Right-click the entry Ctfmon.exe, click Delete, and then click Yes.
16. Close Registry Editor.

Repeat steps 1 through 16 for each profile on this computer.

back to the top

Turn Off Handwriting Recognition

1. Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
2. Double-click Regional and Language Options.
3. Click the Languages tab, and then click Details.
4. Click Language Bar.
5. Click to select the Turn off advanced text services check box.
6. Click OK. If you are prompted to confirm the change, click Yes. Click OK.

To turn off Handwriting Recognition in Microsoft Windows 2000, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
2. Double-click Regional and Language Options.
3. On the Input/Locales tab, click Change.
4. Under Installed Services, click Handwriting Recognition, and then click Remove.
5. Click OK to apply the changes.

Note You may have to restart your computer. back to the top

Turn Off Speech Recognition

1. Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
2. Double-click Regional and Language Options.
3. Click the Languages tab, and then click Details.
4. Under Installed services, click Speech Recognition, click Remove, and then click OK.
5. Click OK to apply all the changes.

Note You may have to restart your computer.

To turn off Speech Recognition in Windows 2000, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
2. Double-click Regional and Language Options.
3. On the Input/Locales tab, click Change.
4. Under Installed services, click Speech Recognition, click Remove, and then click OK.
5. Click OK to apply the changes.

back to the top Note By default, the Office XP features and components that require the CTFMON.EXE file are disabled during installation in a Terminal Server environment. Although these features can be enabled through a custom installation, Microsoft recommends that CTFMON remain disabled in a Terminal Server environment because of potential performance issues.

Additional Steps For Terminal Server Environments

1. You must replace the existing Default User profile with a copy of a clean, updated profile to ensure propagation of appropriate configurations to new users.
2. Existing user profiles require a script to remove the CTFMON.EXE registry value that is noted above from the profile because these values already exist and will, therefore, start CTFMON.EXE for each user session unless you remove it.
   1. Before you create the script, you must first create a reg file. Below is sample DisableCTF.reg file text:

      Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 
      [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run] "ctfmon.exe"=- 
      [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\CTF] "Disable Thread Input Manager"=dword:00000001 
      [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\CTF\MSUTB] "ShowDeskBand"=dword:00000000  

   2. After you create the reg file, you can use the following sample script to remove the CTFMON.EXE registry value.

      Rem *****This script implements registry settings to prevent CTFMON.EXE from re-registering itself on the system***** 
      REGEDIT -s <Path>\DisableCTF.REG

You can remove or disable the script after these settings are appropriately removed from existing profiles.