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I am a previous owner of a Surface Pro 2, and loved the capability it provided of customizing the button commands per program through the Wacom drivers. As a new owner of the surface Pro 3, I a very disappointed to discover that the same functionality is not available in the N-trig driver options. As an artist, the primary use of my surface is for drawing inside of programs like Adobe Photoshop. Not being able to customize the button functions on the new pen is detrimental to my efficiency as a digital artist. Without the ease of having quick access to specific commands through the pen buttons, I am forced to either dig through the menus and submenus of the program to execute a simple command, or connect a keyboard to use hotkeys. One of the greatest features of the surface is the ability to draw inside of photoshop as if it were a paper notebook, freeing me from my desktop work space and removing the requirement of the mouse and keyboard. Without the customization of these pen buttons, I lose that freedom.
I spoke to a Microsoft support tech this morning who informed me that "hopefully" in the next month or two, this feature will be added to the pen drivers. While this is a new product, and I understand that some features are still in development, this feature is crucial in the workflow of any artist using this device. I already own a desktop computer and a laptop; so again, the primary function of the Surface Pro 3 for me is drawing inside of programs like Photoshop without the need for a mouse and keyboard.
I don't know if any Microsoft representatives read these discussions, but if there is a way I could be included in any sort of pre-release developmental versions of drivers that introduce this capability, I would love to be a part of it and am happy to provide feedback from an artist's perspective.
Thanks for reading.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
I just uninstalled and then reinstall the Surface App (just to make sure) but nothing like this appears on my SP3!
One and a half years of waiting now and MS did still not react to thousands of users' requests! Instead they redesign icons ||-(
Extremely frustrating!
It seems that Microsoft has finally responded! In Windows 10, within the Surface app, under the pen settings tab, THERE IS NOW PEN CUSTOMIZATION DROP DOWN LISTS FOR THE TOP ERASER BUTTON. Not only that, but the single click, double click & hold down actions can have separate actions customized!
Although not robust in terms of detail, with only the ability to command "OPEN" an executable file, it nevertheless allows the opening up of OneNote desktop version as opposed to the mobile app version! Appreciate Microsoft embedding this functionality within Windows instead of using a thrid party scripting language!
I do not know whether this is available only to the Surface Pro 4 pen (pictured) or also to the Surface 3 pen. Would be interested to find out!
Merry Christmas!
I'm sorry this continues to remain unaddressed, however I am pleased to see your post. After owning a pro 3 for just a few months I viewed the announcement for the Pro 4 with some disappointment feeling that this issue would now fall into the obsolescence hole and never be resolved.
Now that I see that the Pro 4 users have the same frustration; I am hopeful that although this thread has gone on for this long with now 16 pages of unanswered comments that users will continue to voice their comments and one day someone from Microsoft will take notice and respond.
Sorry.... I've spent a good amount of time looking into both Auto Hotkey and Event Ghost, and have had exactly ZERO success, remapping the side buttons. But have wasted a lot of time in the process…
It is terrible that Microsoft has not come up with an easy Windows-embedded way to customize these buttons in the last year and a half, or so since the Surface Pro 3 was released...
That said, as a non-programmer, who has worked on computers daily, in videogame development for the last 15 years (& I'm considered fairly technical for a videogame artist), I find myself completely out of my depth with most all of the code I see surrounding "fixes" and partial fixes for this issue. ;)
I can't comment on options 3 through 5...
As a new Surface buyer (Surface Pro 4 -- i5 8G 256 lot#1541), I cannot believe how long it has been for veterans of both this website & the
Surface Forum website, to share, ask & wait for a Pen
Customization solution from Microsoft. 
Ever since the pen came about with the Surface Pro 3, many users and business sectors (mostly digital artists) have called for
Pen Customization -- with no response from Microsoft.
Technical businesses do not wait around for an opportunity and so there are third party solutions for pen customization, without ANY having a polished plug & play interface...
etc., Etc., ETC... (let me know if there are more or better ones!!)
It takes the user time and technical skill to create "macros" using these third party scripting language solutions.
There are various YouTube
videos showing step-by-step how to program the customization solution using these third party scripting languages.
In these videos, there are always one or two steps in this process where you have to take a leap of faith that the technical skill of the person creating the video is showing you to do what you want in the way that you want it.
But I guess beggars can't be choosers!
For instance,
when in desktop mode or tablet mode, without any windows active, pressing the top eraser button to open OneNote 2013/2016 desktop NOT ONENOTE APP is a popular request.
OR
When in PowerPoint, pressing the top eraser button advances the slide.
These are just basic requests which Microsoft has ignored.
I am sure that there are MANY others, especially from digital artists.
The Question :
Which scripting tool is the easiest to formulate macros and has the most amount of support for beginners?
Thanks!