How to turn off the speech recognition and the handwriting recognition features in Office 2003 (823586)

SUMMARY

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

Microsoft Office contains a speech recognition feature and a handwriting recognition feature. You can use speech recognition to dictate text to any Office program. You can also use your voice to select menu items, toolbar items, dialog box items, and task pane items. (You can use your voice to select dialog box items and task pane items only in U.S. English language versions of Office.) 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.

You can use handwriting recognition to type text in 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 and then you turn on speech recognition and handwriting recognition, these features become part of the operating system. You cannot remove these features, even with the Maintenance Mode of Office Setup.

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Edit The Registry

Before you turn off speech recognition and handwriting recognition, you must edit the registry. 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.

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. Click Add or Remove Programs.
6. In the Currently installed programs list, click Microsoft Office version 2003, and then click Change.
7. Click Add or Remove Features, and then click Next.
8. Click to select the Choose advanced customization of applications check box, and then click Next.
9. In the Advanced Customization pane, follow these steps:
   1. Expand Microsoft Office.
   2. Expand Microsoft Office Excel, click the symbol next to Text to Speech, and then click Not Available.
   3. Expand Office Shared Features.
   4. Expand Alternative User Input.
   5. Click the symbol next to Speech, and then click Not Available.
   6. Click the symbol next to Handwriting, and then click Not Available.
   7. Click the symbol next to Microsoft Handwriting Component, and then click Not Available.
   8. Expand Proofing Tools.
   9. Expand French, click the symbol next to English - French Translation, and then click Not Available.
   10. Expand Spanish, click the symbol next to English - Spanish Translation, and then click Not Available.
10. Click Update.
11. After the update is complete, click Start, and then click Run.
12. 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.
13. Click Start, click Run, type regedit.exe in the Open box, 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. Quit Registry Editor.
17. Repeat steps 1 through 16 for each profile on this computer.

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Turn Off Handwriting Recognition

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

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Turn Off Speech Recognition

1. Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
2. Click Date, Time, Language, and Regional Options.
3. Click Regional and Language Options.
4. On the Languages tab, click Details.
5. Under Installed services, click Speech Recognition, click Remove, and then click OK.
6. Click OK to apply all the changes. You may have to restart your computer.

Note By default, the Office features and components that require the Ctfmon.exe file are turned off 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. back to the top

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. The following is a sample DisableCTF.reg file text:

      REGEDIT4 
      [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 the reg file is created, you can use the following sample script to remove the CTFMON.EXE registry value:

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

The script can be removed or disabled after these settings are appropriately removed from existing profiles.back to the top