Surface pen no longer able to highlight the article

Anonymous
2017-11-06T04:35:32+00:00

I use the surface pen to do personal reading as well as highlighting on the article. However, recently I suddenly cannot do the highlighting  anymore. Each time I tried to highlight, the pen dragged the screen to the next page. Is this the problem with the pen or the application software?

Moved from:      Surface / Surface Pro 4 / Display and screen

Surface | Accessories | Surface Pen

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Anonymous
2017-11-13T21:35:21+00:00

Hi Swee,

I think what you are seeing are some Pen interaction improvements that were made in the Fall Creators update. 

**Scrolling with pen.**In the effort to create a more intuitive pen interaction on Windows, we are emphasizing natural and direct manipulation of content with pen. You don’t have to “hunt and peck” for scrollbars or frequently switch between pen and touch when navigating; now you can scroll content directly and fluently as you would with your finger.

**Selection with pen.**We also revised selection with pen by giving it more control over the selection process. Not only are we showing selection grippers whenever text is selected via pen, but also are allowing for a consistent and fast selection of content – text, objects, or ink—by dragging the pen while the barrel button is pressed.

For example, if you are in Edge or a Store app you can now select text by quickly double tapping a word and then dragging the selection grippers to adjust the words highlighted OR you can press and hold the pen's barrel button while you highlight the desired text.

Hope this helps,

Greg

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  1. Anonymous
    2018-01-25T21:48:06+00:00

    Hello Susan,

    Can you tell us which Surface device are you using? Also, how many side buttons does your Pen have?

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-01-25T17:03:29+00:00

    Whelp, NO. I accepted the forced Fall Creator update and NO my pen won't select text no matter how much I fiddle around with it. What setting or variable will we need to turn off or on or adjust to restore the ability to select text???? I'm an engineering professor, and need that functionality constantly. REALLY. CONSTANTLY. Please provided an actual solution or I suppose I'll have to roll back. Honestly, the frequent updates are not improvements many times, and I'm about to throw my hands in the air and reformat my desktop to Linux OS.

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-01-24T05:48:29+00:00

    I changed it back by uninstalling the Fall Creators update and turning off the auto update settings. 

     The obvious problem with that is you miss out on the new features in the update, but  you can also only defer new updates for a limited time. It also means your PC may be more vulnerable if there are any security updates (I'm not sure if you would be able to install those manually or if you would need the Creators update too).

    It's a real pain, not least because the pen seems to work differently or not at all in different website and apps, but I don't understand why they had to change it in the first place. It was superb the way it was, and as the saying goes "If it ain't broke don't fix it!"

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-01-24T05:24:20+00:00

    Having just used it as it was for the past 20 minutes has made me realise even more what a real pain the changes have made. I can only hope that a large number of people feel the same and ask for a solution. 

    Absolutely agree.

    And, yes, re-installing the driver and does nothing since this is not a bug but "feature."

    It doesn't make any sense since being able to simply highlight and move text around with the pen is a major advantage of using the surface with the pen in the first place.  I really don't like it either and canned Microsoft response here was clearly obnoxious.

    I hate this new version of copying text too.  Has nothing to do with the pen.  A lot of times I just use my finger to quickly highlight text to copy or cut.  Used to do it with no problem.  Now the same two circles show up.  I was trying to copy and paste a lot of text for an ebay listing, what a pain, it took forever.  I need to get my surface back to the way it was before.  Please let us know how to change that feature back to the original way.  The last week I have spent a couple hours on google & bing trying to find the answer with no luck.  This is the first time I saw someone else hates it too, and it was the Fall Creators update.  Today I had a lot of copy and pasting to do so I turned on my old desktop running XP.  Copy, cut & pasted easy using mouse.  Hey Coolcity2 let me know if you find a way to change it back.

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