> I want to move to Dragon Naturally Speaking professional from Dragon
> Naturally Speaking prefered. How do I make the switch ensuring that
> my user profile stays intact?

I suggest creating a new user profile when you begin using the Professional
edition. Your new voice files will rival your old ones in accuracy after an
hour or two of dictating and correcting misrecognitions. In fact, your new
profile may be more accurate right from the start if you were doing a lot of
learning the first time you created a profile.

Consider exporting a list of your unique words from the Preferred edition,
and importing them into the Professional Edition. Do the export while using
the Preferred edition. (Words menu | Export). When you export,
NaturallySpeaking will create a plain text file of your custom vocabulary,
with one word or phrase per line. Special pronunciations that you created
appear on the same line after the word or phrase. The backward slash
separates the custom word from your pronunciation of it:

Pete A. Smith
PgDown\Page Down
PgUp\Page Up
pigmentosa
post-Newtonian

Review this file, line-by-line, before importing it into the Professional
version. You will probably discover some very strange "words" that you never
intended to add, plus words and phrases that you won't be using again. I
trimmed 20% from my custom word list in this way. Half of these were not
even real words. The other half were names of stale contacts, and words and
phrases that I dictated years ago and have had zero need to use since.

Alan

Alan Cantor
Cantor Access Inc.
[log in to unmask]
www.cantoraccess.com