Being a solo-professional I never have anyone around to read back information that I enter into my Excel spreadsheets to help me double check for accuracy. That's why I love the feature Microsoft introduced back in 2002 for Excel called text-to-speech and this is one of my favorite tips that I share with everyone I know that uses Excel. But when I upgraded to Excel 2007 I couldn't find this feature. I searched and searched the ribbons and couldn't seem to locate it. Then one day I just happened to click on the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) and after a few more clicks I found it.

If you're like me and need to have your Excel data double-checked for accuracy follow these steps to get the help you need:

1. Click on the Quick Access Toolbar.
2. Choose More Commands.
3. From the drop down menu under Choose Commands From box scroll down and click Commands Not in the Ribbon.
4. Scroll down the list of commands until you see five commands that begin with the word Speak. Select each one, and then click Add.
5. Click OK to close the Excel Options box.

After you perform these steps, the Quick Access Toolbar displays five new icons.

To read a range of cells, select the range first and then click the Speak Cells button. You can also select either having them read By Rows or By Columns. To read the data as it's entered, click the Speak Cells On Enter button before you enter your data.

You can change the voice if you like, along with adjusting the speed the information is read back. To accomplish this follow the following steps:

1. Open the Windows Control Panel.
2. Click on the Speech properties dialog box.
3. Select the Text to Speech Tab.
4. Choose your voice selection and then adjust your speed.
5. Click OK to close the Speech properties dialog box.
6. Close the Windows Control Panel.

That's it—you now have a helper to make sure your data entries are correct in Excel 2007.