Kurzweil Support & Resources
To learn more about Kurzweil:
For troubleshooting and technical support:
Mac Reading Software
Opening a Document
You can open PDF, EPUB, RTF, Daisy, PNG, and JPG files in Kurzweil. If you need your course materials in a compatible file type that you can open in Kurzweil, please read the student section on our Alternative Formats web page to learn how to request alternative formats and receive compatible course materials.
To open a document in Kurzweil, navigate to the top menu and go to “File > Open”. There are three different places that you can open a document from:
- Local computer: If you store your course materials on your computer, you can open them by selecting the “Open” option.
- Kurzweil’s Universal Library: The Universal Library is Kurzweil’s cloud storage for your Kurzweil files. If you use the Universal Library, you can access your files across different devices and on kurzweil3000.com.
- Google Drive: If you receive digital course materials from the DRC, you can open these from the “Open from Google Drive” option.
After choosing the file you want to open, a pop-up window titled “Recognition Page Range” will appear. It will automatically auto-populate the page range with the full length of the document you have chosen to open, but you can change this number if you only need to open a portion of the document.
Due to the amount of time the recognition process can take, we do not recommend opening an entire textbook at once within Kurzweil unless it has already been saved in a “.kes” format. The longer your document is, the longer it will take Kurzweil to open and convert it. It is generally best to open a chapter of a textbook at a time. If you don’t have your textbook split into chapter files, you can simply input the page range that you need without opening the whole textbook at once.
After you select “Open”, a pop-up window will appear and Kurzweil will go through a two-step process of adding each page then recognizing them, which makes the document accessible to be read out loud. This window has a progress bar so you can see where it is in the process. Once the window closes, you will be able to access and navigate through the document.
Tip: After the document is done opening, save the document by selecting “File > Save”. When you save the converted .kes file, you don’t have to wait for Kurzweil to run through Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and convert your document each time you open it. You can save the .kes file to your local computer, Kurzweil’s Universal Library, or to Google Drive.
Navigating & Visual Settings
After opening and converting a document in Kurzweil, it will leave you on the first page of the document. You can navigate from page to page by using the small blue left and right arrows at the bottom right of the window, or you can navigate to “View > Next Page” or “View > Previous Page” in the top menu.
For ease of navigation, you can also add navigation tools to the top of the document window in the toolbar. You can do this by right-clicking (“control” key + click) an empty space in the toolbar, then selecting “Customize Toolbar…”. A pop-up window will appear with all the options that you can select and drag into your toolbar. We recommend adding the “Save”, “Open”, “Previous Page”, “Next Page”, and “Read/Pause” tools as a minimum.
If you would like the document width to expand with the size of your document window, you can manually select and drag the edge of the document window to make the Kurzweil window larger. You can then change the zoom to fit your preferences.
There are two places you can change the zoom on the document. One option is to select the plus and minus buttons on the bottom left of the window or use the slider between the buttons. In this same area, you can manually input a percentage value by selecting the textbox to the right of the plus sign button. You can also navigate to “View” in the top menu, then select one of the zoom options.
If you would like to change what initial zoom your documents open with, navigate to the top menu and go to “Kurzweil 3000 > Preferences”. Under the “General” tab in the “Document View” section, you can set the Initial Zoom to any of the options from the dropdown menu.
If you would like to change your document to inverted colors to help with reducing eye strain or for personal preference, you can do this by navigating to “View > Show in Black & White (Inverse)” in the top menu.
Changing Page Numbers
If you want to navigate by page number, you can select the area between the blue arrows at the bottom right of the document window where it indicates what page you are on. A pop-up window will appear where you can input the page number you would like to navigate to. However, putting a page number in navigation only helps if Kurzweil’s page numbers correlate to the textbook page numbers. To change what Kurzweil displays as the first page number, follow the instructions below:
- Navigate to “Edit > Set First Page Number”.
- A pop-up window will appear. Input the correct number for the first page of your document in the “First Page Number should be” text box.
- Select “OK” to update the page numbers.
Reading with Kurzweil
After you have opened a document in Kurzweil and are ready to start reading, you will need to either bring up the Reader window to use the reading controls, or you can use the reading controls found under “Read” in the top menu. To find the Reader window, navigate to “Window > Show Reader” to make the Reader window appear.
You can also add reading controls to your document window’s toolbar by right-clicking (“control” key + click) an empty space in the toolbar, then selecting “Customize Toolbar…”. A pop-up window will appear with all the options that you can select and drag into your toolbar. We recommend adding the “Open”, “Save”, “Previous Page”, “Next Page”, and “Read/Pause” tools as a minimum.
Press the play button in the Reader Window or in your toolbar, or navigate to “Read > Start Reading” to have Kurzweil read from the beginning of the document. You can also select where you would like to begin with your mouse. A red cursor will appear where Kurzweil will start reading.
As Kurzweil reads, a portion of the text will be highlighted in yellow (typically a sentence) and individual words will be highlighted in green as Kurzweil reads them. This makes it easier to visually follow along with the reading. If you would like to keep the highlighting but do not want the audio playing back while Kurzweil reads, select “Read Silently” in your Reader window or navigate to “Read > Read Silently” to mute Kurzweil.
To customize how Kurzweil reads to you, you can change the options in the Reader window, or you can navigate to “Read” in the top menu. You can change the following options:
- Voice: The voices you can use with Kurzweil include system voices that are already installed on your device and Kurzweil voices. We recommend using Kurzweil voices with Kurzweil because they typically sound more natural. Simply select the voice from the appearing list that you would like to use (Note: You can download extra free Kurzweil voices. Please read the Downloading Additional Voices section of this guide for more information).
- Words Per Minute: You can change the playback speed and make it faster or slower by using the up and down arrows, or by typing a numerical value into the text box.
- Reading Units: Reading units are the portion of text that is highlighted in yellow as Kurzweil reads. You can change it to highlight a word at a time, a line at a time, a sentence at a time, or more. If you have your reading mode set to “Self-Paced”, it will stop reading after each unit level that you have selected.
- Reading Mode: There are three reading modes that you can choose that will determine how Kurzweil will read the document as a whole. To change the reading mode, simply select the option you would like.
- Continuous: Kurzweil will read until it reaches the end of the document. This is the option we usually recommend.
- Self-Paced: Kurzweil will stop reading after each reading unit. This can be helpful if you want Kurzweil to stop reading after each sentence or each paragraph so you can take notes.
- Word-by-word: Kurzweil will stop reading after each word. This option is typically good for spelling lists or vocab words.
If you have a document in a language other than English, you can change the language by navigating to “Kurzweil 3000 > Preferences”, then going to the “Reading'' tab. In the “Speaker” section, you can select the dropdown menu to see the language options. You can download additional voices for different languages from the Kurzweil Download webpage.
If there is anything that you want to customize, you can change your preferences by navigating to “Kurzweil 3000 > Preferences” in the top menu. For example, by default Kurzweil has pop-up windows with a tip of the day and a welcome document when you log in, so if you don’t want those to pop up every time, you can change that setting here. You can also customize the colors that Kurzweil highlights in while it reads, and more.
How to Skip Headers & Footers
Oftentimes textbook pages will likely have headers and footers that include copyright content, the book title, and other things that you may not want Kurzweil to read. To avoid hearing this content on every page, make sure that you have the “Skip Headers/Footers” option selected in your Kurzweil preferences.
If Kurzweil still reads the headers and footers after setting your preferences to skip headers and footers, you can delete each individual header and footer “zone” on each page of your document so that Kurzweil won’t detect and read that text.
To delete headers/footers, use the following instructions:
- Go to the top menu and choose “Scan > Zones > Edit Zones”. The document should then appear in zone edit view. Zones appear in numbered, colored frames.
- Click on the zone that contains the header or footer.
- Hold down the “control” key on your keyboard and click on the zone to display the Zone Edit contextual menu, then select “Delete Zone”, or select the eraser icon from the floating toolbar and click the zone you want to delete.
- Repeat steps 2-3 for each page.
- Go to the top menu and choose “Scan > Zones > Edit Zones” to exit the zone edit view.
- Select “Read > Start Reading” or use your Reader window to start reading without headers and footers.
Note Taking Tools
In Kurzweil, there are note taking tools you can use on your document to help support you as you read and study.
You can access the note taking tools by navigating to “Window > Show Tools” to bring up the floating Tools toolbar, or you can navigate to “Tools” in the top menu and select the appropriate tool you would like. Below are some commonly used note taking tools:
- Highlighters: To use a highlighter, select a color/style, then highlight portions of text by clicking and dragging. We usually recommend using any color besides green and yellow, since those colors are what Kurzweil uses when reading out loud. You can color code for main ideas, supporting ideas, and other important information.
- Eraser: To erase highlights, select the eraser tool and click and drag across the text that you have highlighted.
- Text notes: Text notes are plain text that you can reposition anywhere on the document page. (Tip: If you click and drag over text to highlight it with your cursor, then click and drag the portion of text to white space on your document, it will create a text note for you with the text you highlighted).
- Sticky notes: Sticky notes are plain text with a colored background that you can reposition anywhere on the document page.
- Voice notes: You can record your voice for a voice note. After saving your recording, a red icon of a person speaking will appear that you can select to listen to the recording.
- Footnotes: Footnotes appear as a numbered icon that allows you to type expandable notes without taking up too much document space. To create a footnote, select the footnote option from the Tools toolbar and then select what word in your document you would like the footnote to attach to. A window will appear where you can type in your note. When you are done, select the “X” icon on the top left of the window to save and exit the footnote. A small number should appear to the top left of the word you selected, and you can select this number to access your footnote.
- Column Notes: Column notes are a note file you can create in Kurzweil to support you in note taking. The file has three columns that are labeled “Main Idea”, “Supporting Idea”, and “Other”. You can use column notes to type in organized notes that you can reference later or export to an outline. You can create a column notes file by either navigating to “File > New Column Note File” or “Tools > Column Notes > New Column Notes”.
- When you open a new column notes file, a column notes window will appear. To save and exit your column notes, select the “X” icon on the top left of the Column Notes window and select “Save As...” when it asks if you want to save it.
- If you have used the highlighter note taking tool and want to use those highlights in a column notes file:
- Navigate to “File > Extract Highlights To Column Notes...”.
- A pop-up window will appear. Set the highlighter colors to correspond to the column you want them to appear in, then select “OK”.
- A secondary pop-up window will appear. If you haven’t saved a column notes file before that you want to add on to, select “Open a new notes file”.
- A column notes window will appear that will autofill with the highlights you have made. You can also type in additional notes.
- To save and exit your column notes, select the “X” icon on the top left of the Column Notes window and select “Save As...” when it asks if you want to save it.
- To create an outline from an opened column notes file, navigate to “File > Extract Column Notes to Outline...”.
The notes you take with Kurzweil’s note taking tools are designed to be reviewed within Kurzweil. However, after you have finished taking notes on your documents, you can choose to export your notes. This may be helpful for citations that you want to put into a paper or if you would like to access your notes in a different format. To export your notes:
- Navigate to “File > Extract Notes & Highlighted Text...”.
- A pop-up window will appear. We recommend checkmarking all of the boxes, but you can customize what you select to fit your needs. After you are done checkmarking, select “Extract”.
- A pop-up window will appear that will contain the notes you have taken. You can copy and paste this into a Microsoft Word document or a Google Doc, or you can save the file. To save and exit the notes file, click the “X” at the top left of the window and select “Save...” when it asks if you want to save it.
Creating an MP3 File of Your Readings
If you would like to listen to a document outside of Kurzweil, you can create an MP3 file of the document. To create an audio file:
- Navigate to “File > Create Audio File”.
- A pop-up window will appear. You can customize the words per minute, the voice, and other options in this window. We recommend making the file format an MP3. If you would like to create an audiobook in Apple Music, checkmark the appropriate box. When you are finished with the settings, select “OK”.
- If you did not select to save to Apple Music, another pop-up window will appear allowing you to select where you would like to save the MP3 on your computer.
- A small pop-up window will appear with a progress bar. Once the progress bar fills and the window closes, your MP3 file has been created and saved.
Downloading Additional Voices
You can download extra free Kurzweil voices (also called “Acapela Voices”) from the Kurzweil Download web page. To find these voices, scroll down on the Kurzweil Download page until you find the “Additional Acapela Voices” section, then select the “Macintosh” link that corresponds to the voice package you would like to download.
After downloading the voice package file, open it and follow the instructions to complete the voice download. After the download is complete and you restart Kurzweil, the new voices should be available for your use.
Mac Writing Software
You can use Kurzweil to support you in the writing process. Kurzweil’s writing features include brainstorms, outlines, and drafts.
Brainstorms
Brainstorms are Kurzweil’s version of a digital writing graphic organizer. Brainstorms are a great tool that can help you visually organize your thoughts, allowing you to plan a paper by structuring ideas through hierarchical charts and color-coding.
To create a brainstorm, navigate to “File > Start Writing > Brainstorm” from the top menu. You can then select to create a blank brainstorm from scratch or use a template that you can fill in.
With brainstorm templates, there will be shapes on the brainstorm that contain filler text. You can edit the text in a shape by selecting the shape, deleting the existing text, and typing in your desired idea. We recommend keeping your thoughts to just a few words.
To access the tools that will help you construct and edit your brainstorm, navigate to “Window > Show Tools” to bring up your floating toolbar. Some of the tools included on the toolbar include:
- Add Sub-Idea: The button that has two speech bubbles allows you to add thoughts that appear hierarchically below a selected shape.
- Link: The button with a chain link allows you to link together shapes, indicating the hierarchy of your ideas. To use the Link button, select the shape in your brainstorm that is to be higher in the hierarchy, then select the Link button. A directional arrow will appear on your cursor, which you can then move to the sub-idea’s shape that you want to link, then select it to link.
- Oval/Rectangle/Diamond: With the different shape buttons, you can add a corresponding shape to your brainstorm. You can use the different shapes to represent different levels of ideas (e.g. main ideas, sub-ideas, details). To add a shape, start by selecting a blank space on your brainstorm, and crosshairs should appear. Then select the shape from the Brainstorm Palette that you would like to add, and it will appear where the crosshairs were. You can link these shapes together by using the Link button.
- Change Color: You can use the color wheel button to change the color of the shapes and the background of your brainstorm.
- Delete: If there is a shape on your brainstorm that you no longer want, you can select the shape, then select the trashcan icon in the toolbar.
- Add Note: You can add notes to certain ideas by selecting a shape, then selecting the notepad icon from the toolbar.
As you are creating your brainstorm, you can select and drag the shapes around to organize them in a way that makes sense to you.
Once you are done creating your brainstorm, you can convert it into an outline instantly by selecting the “Outline View” or “Split Screen View” icon in the top toolbar in your brainstorm window.
Outlines
Outlines are a great way to plan your ideas ahead of time before writing a paper and can also provide important organization to make sure your ideas flow.
To create an outline, navigate to “File > Start Writing > Outline” from the top menu. You can then select to create a blank outline from scratch or use a template that you can fill in.
To access the tools that will help you construct and edit your brainstorm, navigate to “Window > Show Tools” to bring up your floating toolbar. You can use this toolbar to add bullets and change indentation, or you can use the “Enter” key on your keyboard to add bullets to the same list level. We recommend writing at least a phrase or sentence for each bullet.
Once you are done making your outline, you can use the “Split Screen View” icon in the top toolbar of your outline window to start typing your draft while still having your outline visible.
Drafts
The Draft feature in Kurzweil is a word processor similar to Microsoft Word or Google Doc, but has the added feature that it can read your paper back to you.
To create a draft, navigate to “File > Start Writing > Draft” from the top menu. You can then select to create a blank draft from scratch or use a template that you can fill in.
You can use the writing tools under “Edit” in the top menu to support you while you write:
- Word Prediction: Select the Word Prediction tool to have potential words appear while you write. To select a word, either select the number of the word in the list or press the Command key plus the number of the word in the list.
- Spelling: Check your spelling and receive replacement suggestions.
After writing your paper and saving it, you can use the Read play button in the Reader window or navigate to “Read > Start Reading” to have your paper read out loud to you to do extra proofreading.
Note: You can format your paper within Kurzweil including changing alignment and font, but if you will be copying and pasting your paper into another format such as a Microsoft Word document or a Google Doc, sometimes the formatting does not copy over. We generally recommend copying and pasting your paper into a Microsoft Word document or a Google Doc once your paper is complete and you are done proofreading because your professor might not be able to access Kurzweil’s writing file type.