Office 365 "Read Aloud".

Hi Bob,

Welcome to the Microsoft Community. Thank you for supporting Microsoft 365.

The languages that are read aloud in Microsoft 365 apps are usually associated with Windows language packs. For different regional English language packs, they have different voices; Zira and David are United States English voices.

What regional English are you using on your more natural sounding computer? Make sure the language settings on the second computer are the same as it and see what happens?

You can refer to the following documentation:

Download languages and voices for Immersive Reader, Read Mode, and Read Aloud - Microsoft Support

I hope this is useful and please feel free to ask any questions or share any results.

Best regards,

Ian - MSFT | Microsoft Community Support Specialist

I have reviewed the suggestions you posted a link to many times in the past, thinking I have missed something. I have also uninstalled and reinstalled Office 365, but that has not worked. I also noted that there are many online postings for the same issue.

In reviewing the Read Aloud setting on both computers, the Read Aloud voices show the same (David, Zira, and Mark). However, when I click Read Aloud on my other computers, the dialogue box appears and shows a male or female natural-sounding voice.

With all the advances Office 365 offers and all the online posts I have read complaining about losing the natural-sounding voices, why can Microsoft provide a link to install (or reinstall) the natural-sounding voices?

This same issue occurred in July 2023 and was caused by an Office update that killed the natural voices and reverted back to the robotic David/Zira/Mark voices. It took a few weeks, but the issue was resolved in the next Office update. So, here we are again in 2025. Does Microsoft actually think anyone wants to use those old voices again? Just get rid of them in the Windows and Office products. Completely. This problem has nothing to do with Windows language packs as suggested below. It's an Office update problem. If you need to use Read Aloud, do not update your Office software until this is fixed.