MacSpeech Dictate is a great program but learning so many commands at once can be intimidating. Here’s a quick document to help you learn and remember the important commands for controlling Mail.app with MacSpeech Dictate version 1.2.1.
This list doesn’t show you all the commands which are available for Mail.app – just the ones you’re likely to use many times a day. It also doesn’t show the global commands which are available in Mail.app as they are in all other applications – there are already command lists and a cheat sheet for the globals.
The sheet is a half page format that you can easily print out and refer to while you work. I’m making a PDF available for easy printing, and a version in the original Pages ’08 format for those who might want to edit it for themselves. I’ve also created versions in both A4 and US Letter page sizes, which should cover everybody’s standard page sizes.
- MacSpeech Dictate 1.2.1 Mail.app Cheat Sheet, US, PDF
- MacSpeech Dictate 1.2.1 Mail.app Cheat Sheet, A4, PDF
- MacSpeech Dictate 1.2.1 Mail.app Cheat Sheet, US, Pages
- MacSpeech Dictate 1.2.1 Mail.app Cheat Sheet, A4, Pages
These documents aren’t in any way meant to replace the Dictate User’s Manual – every Dictate user really should read the manual, even if you’re not the “manual reading type”. Trust me, you’ll get far better use of Dictate if you have read the manual! But nobody’s memory is perfect, especially for a program with so many commands, so I’ve made these cheat sheets to go with the manual.
If you edit these for yourself, let me know what you come up with – I’d love to see.
- Ricky Buchanan
If you are going to buy or upgrade any version of MacSpeech Dictate from the USA or UK.
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Jane Vincent February 25, 2009 at 9:32 am
I just received an announcement that MacSpeech Dictate 1.3 has been released as a free download for registered Dictate owners. The main improvement from an accessibility standpoint is that keypress emulation is now supported, so that you can say “Press the Key J” or “Press the Key Combo Option Q.” There is also an extensive list of bug fixes. Full details are available at http://www.macspeech.com/pages.php?pID=131
Dictate still has a ways to go before it’s as powerful as the Windows program NaturallySpeaking, but it’s impressive to see how active MacSpeech is being in responding to user comments.
–Jane Vincent, Center for Accessible Technology
jbvincent {at] cforat.org
Ricky Buchanan February 25, 2009 at 1:13 pm
@Jane: Thanks for the heads-up, I’ll check it out as soon as my computer is behaving again.