Small dictating systems

[Ratafia]

I work for a charity where a lot of people WFH. We want to set up a couple of people so that they can dictate documents to be typed separately by an admin person or volunteer. We're confused about the range of choice available, but ideally I think we need dictaphones plus transcriptions systems for the typists; if the dictaphones can also be used with software that will transcribe directly onto the screen reasonably accurately, so much the better.

Does anyone have recommendations for anything like that that is reasonably cheap and cheerful but reliable?

Word has a built-in "Dictate" feature on the Home tab (over on the right-hand side of the button; the icon looks like a microphone). I've never used it, but maybe try experimenting with that?

You click on the down-arrow from the "Dictate" icon and choose "Transcribe" then "Start recording." When you've finished speaking, you press "Save and transcribe now" and there are various options, e.g. "Add to document... Just text."

There is also an option to upload a saved recording, which might well be easier.

We've tried the inbuilt system, but it really isn't satisfactory - you spend almost as much time correcting things and sorting out the layout etc as you would typing it from scratch.

Oh dear! Have you tried it with a complete audio file uploaded?

Alternatively, there are various free online audio transcribers such as this one:

restream.io/tools/transcribe-audio-to-text