We know you have Windows XP but what version of Excel do you have?

Earlier versions did not have Text to Speech capability.

Here are instructions found under Help in Excel 2003

Play back worksheet data
You must have speakers installed to perform this procedure.

Play back a group of cells

On the Tools menu, point to Speech, and then click Show Text To Speech
Toolbar.
Select a group of cells to read back.
Choose how the computer will read back your data by clicking By Rows or By
Columns on the Text To Speech toolbar.
Click Speak Cells if you want the computer to read back each cell in your
selection.
To correct an error, click Stop Speaking , and use your mouse and keyboard
to make the necessary changes.
Click Speak Cells to continue having the computer read back your selection


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

On Wed, 1 Apr 2009 14:02:05 -0700, MotorCityRock
wrote:

I have not been able to get text to speech to work in Excel that has Windows
XP. I haven't used this function in quite some time and I don't know if it
is because of XP that it will not work or for some other reason. Should be
simple to set up and use.