Outlook read aloud in classic and new Outlook
Outlook can read your email aloud, which helps with long messages, proofreading your own replies or simply resting your eyes. Where the button is depends on which Outlook you use: classic Outlook has a Read Aloud button, while the new Outlook for Windows reads through Immersive Reader.
This guide shows both, their controls and limits, and how to turn an email or a newsletter into an audio file you can listen to anywhere.
Classic Outlook
Open the message and select Read Aloud on the Home or Message tab. Outlook reads it with your device’s text-to-speech voices. The controls let you pause, skip between paragraphs and stop, and the gear icon at the top right changes the reading speed.
The new Outlook
Select or open the message, then on the View tab choose Immersive Reader. The message opens in large text; press Play at the bottom of the window. The voice settings next to it change the speed and the voice gender. Microsoft notes that reading aloud straight from the reading pane is not supported in the new Outlook.
If the option is missing
Microsoft suggests making sure you are signed in to your Microsoft 365 account and restarting Outlook. Menus change between versions, so check Microsoft’s support article for your Outlook if the steps do not match. Microsoft also states that Read Aloud does not store your content or audio.
An email as an audio file
Read Aloud plays live; it does not save a file. To listen to a long email or a newsletter on a walk, copy the text into a file and voice it with the free SuperClonica engine: install it with python -m pip install superclonica-cpu and run superclonica --text-file email.txt --voice F2 --lang en --output email.mp3. It runs offline on your own computer, so the text never leaves it, and speaks 31 languages.
Voices
Outlook uses the voices of your system. SuperClonica has ten stock voices, about 190 catalog voices and the option to train your own; any catalog voice can be tried free on a line of 30 to 100 characters on its page.