USING DRAGON WITH MICROSOFT EXCEL – COMMAND CHEAT SHEET
Dragon provides a number of natural language commands to use with Microsoft Excel. Using
these commands, you can avoid the multiple menu-selection and mouse-movement steps
associated with the traditional Microsoft Windows interface. There are two modes for using
voice commands in Microsoft Excel:
Quick Edit Mode: Allows you to enter new content into a cell, overwrite the current
contents of a cell, or format the entire contents of a cell. When you select a cell and
begin dictating, a yellow background appears to indicate that the dictated text will be
inserted into the cell. If the cell currently contains text, the new dictated text will overwrite
the existing text. If you want to format the contents of a cell, select the cell, or select a
portion of the cell’s contents, and say a formatting command, such as "Set Font Arial 10
Points Bold."
Full Edit Mode: Allows you to edit the existing contents of a cell. If you want to add to or
edit the current contents of a cell, select the cell and say "Edit Cell" or "Press F2" to
open the cell for editing. When you enter Full Edition Mode, the background color
changes to blue. Entering Full Edit Mode is analogous to double-clicking a cell. Line and
Paragraph commands, such as "New Line" operate within the selected cell in Full Edit
mode. Saying “apply” completes entry into a cell, and leaves the focus on that cell
(exiting Quick Edit mode).
Creating, Opening, and Closing a Spreadsheet
TO SAY
Create a new spreadsheet 1. "start Microsoft Excel"
2. "create new file" or "create new workbook"
Open an existing spreadsheet 1. "start Microsoft Excel"
2. "open file" or "open document"
3. "<file name>," for example, "my spreadsheet"
4. "click open"
Close a spreadsheet "close file" or "close document"
Saving, Renaming, and Moving to Another Spreadsheet
TO SAY
Save a spreadsheet as a.XLS
file
1. "save file"
2. dictate a file name (only needed if this is the first
time the file has been saved)
3. "click save"
Save a spreadsheet in HTML
format
1. "save file as webpage"
2. "click save"
3. (if a dialog box appears warning of a format loss)
"click continue"
Rename a spreadsheet "rename the worksheet"
Moving to another open
spreadsheet
"go to next/previous worksheet"