New Microsoft Edge 'Read Aloud' Feature No Longer Working Properly - Infinite Loading

Hi Wightie. I'm Greg, awarded MVP for eleven years, Volunteer Moderator, and Independent Advisor here to help you until this is resolved.

There is a known issue with Edge Read Aloud not working for PDF documents. See possible fixes here:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/microsofted...
https://windowsreport.com/read-aloud-ebooks-mic... (Avoid ad links which intrude into editorial copy, especially avoid Restoro ad)
https://www.windowsdispatch.com/enable-read-alo...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sj14Sp-QmEo

I hope this helps. Based on what you report back I can answer any questions and may have other steps to perform.

______________________________________________
Standard Disclaimer: There are links to non-Microsoft websites. The pages appear to be providing accurate, safe information. Watch out for ads on the sites that may advertise products frequently classified as a PUP (Potentially Unwanted Products). Thoroughly research any product advertised on the sites before you decide to download and install it.

Hi Greg, 

Thanks for the reply. I had actually already seen this video since I made my initial post, and unfortunately the issue that the video is addressing is not the same issue that I'm having. 

For me, the read aloud button is already available and I can select it in my PDFs when I view them with Edge. The issue is that when I actually select read aloud, it never starts doing it. It just loads infinitely. 

Since making my post from earlier, I've been going through some other PDF textbooks that I have saved and that I've historically been able to successfully use the Read Aloud feature with them. It's appearing as though this is a Edge-side issue, rather than a PDF side issue, because now I'm not able to get any of my PDFs to read aloud, despite having the option available to me. Just like with the book I was talking about in my initial post, I can select read aloud and then it just starts loading infinitely. 

In all of my searching around, it appears as though there has been an update to Edge, so I'm thinking that this is what's causing all of these issues - is there any way to revert to the previous version?

What about the three other tutorials I gave you?

I will give you all steps to fix Edge so at least something will work. Resetting and other repairs are known to have fixed this PDF not reading aloud issue:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/forum/...

If possible back up your Favorites first in Edge Hub (three dots top right of browser) > Favorites > Manage Favorites > Export to file: https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/143983-how-.... If you can't open Edge but another browser will open, then go into it's Settings to try to "Import from another Browser" your Edge Favorites so they are at least backed up.

You can reset new Edge in Edge Settings > Reset Settings.

If Reset doesn't help then re-register the app from Option Two here: http://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/3175-apps-re...

If nothing else helps then run a Repair Install by installing the Media Creation Tool and choosing from it to Upgrade Now. This reinstalls Windows while saving your files, apps and settings in place, brings it up to the latest version which you need anyway and by the most stable method. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/m...

I hope this helps. Feel free to ask back any questions and let us know how it goes. I will keep working with you until it's resolved.

________________________________________________________
Standard Disclaimer: There are links to non-Microsoft websites. The pages appear to be providing accurate, safe information. Watch out for ads on the sites that may advertise products frequently classified as a PUP (Potentially Unwanted Products). Thoroughly research any product advertised on the sites before you decide to download and install it.

Hi again Gregg!

i did try all off the suggestions that those link’s suggested, and unfortunately had little success. I did, however find a work around, and I think I’ve determined the issue. 
whenever i try to use read aloud for a large PDF (800+ pages), the loading meter just goes on for ages and nothing is ever read aloud. But when its a smaller page number (i.e. only a few hundred pages) the read aloud function works no problem.

I noticed last night that there was a new Edge update that released lately, so I figure that it was that update which changed something to introduce the problem. 

In the meantime, ive acquired a program that slows me to extract individual pages from a large PDF to make a smaller PDF which can actually be read. 

would love to se this issue be addressed in a future update, though. Regardless, thanks for your time and effort. 

I'm glad to hear it's partially resolved. Make sure you tried all of the steps I gave including re-registering Edge to see if it can be totally fixed.

If you want to report this to Edge Developers you can choose the Edge Hub (three dots to right of URL address bar) then Help & Feedback, then Feedback form to fill out. They will not even see it here, as this is a tech forums where mostly volunteers try to help others with their problems.

Hello,

My name is Ben, and I'm a Microsoft Edge Community Manager. Great to meet you! I see that the issue was partially resolved previously, but I wanted to check in.

Are you still experiencing this issue? If so, have recent updates helped at all? These details will help us to know what to investigate. Thank you, and I wish you all the best!

-Ben

Facing same problem

Hello! I am having the same problem. It seems to happen with PDF files I've created only. The PDFs are no more than 10 total pages but it "loads" indefinitely and doesn't ever read aloud or it ignores/doesn't recognize the click on the "Play" button. For a PDF curriculum I purchased, it is working fine.

Any guidance would be appreciated, I'm trying to use this for my son who is deafblind and give him access to his curriculum.

Thank you!

I don't recall there being an official fix via an update for this problem but I found that eventually things started working as designed again (though it took a few weeks). In the time between it not working and starting to work again I used a tool called PDF24 (would recommend) to break my larger PDFs down into smaller page ranges, and then used the detect text option to create a new readable PDF - this new, trimmed, and text-detectable file worked consistently with the read aloud function. Good luck to you and your son :)