Pen top button won't open OneNote

Anonymous

I just got a Surface Pro 3 yesterday. I now have Windows 8.1 Enterprise and after a long ordeal without networking drivers (even for the Ethernet dongle), all the drivers are installed and almost everything seems to be working correctly. The firmware update is complete. Everything seems up-to-date in Windows Update.

The one problem is that when I press the OneNote button on the pen, OneNote doesn't open up.

I have followed the troubleshooting steps for the Pen not opening OneNote by following the steps for Solution 1 here: http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/support/touch-mouse-and-search/troubleshoot-surface-pen#penonenote

I have not replaced the batteries (Solution 2) for a couple of reasons, including that I just got it yesterday with new batteries and I seem to be able to get the device to pair via Bluetooth manually in the above step and I don't think it would do that if it needed new batteries. The light on the device also seems to indicate that it's able to pair and successfully paired, when I pair it manually.

When I use the pen for inking, erasing, selecting, etc. everything works fine. It's only the OneNote part that isn't working. Even that top button works for pairing, so it doesn't seem to be the button or coin batteries up there.

Furthermore, when I look at the Bluetooth settings screen it looks to me like everything is working fine. Usually the Pen is "Not Connected" but it's showing up on the list since I paired it. When I click the big purple OneNote button on the pen, the "Not Connected" message goes away. It doesn't explicitly say it's connected, but the Surface Pro 3 is clearly recognizing the activity at least and it seems like it's connected (no error messages or indications of problems). Sometimes when I press the button, instead of the "Not Connected" just changing to blank, it'll show a brief loading bar first and then look just the same (blank, without the "Not Connected" message). Either way, the "Not Connected" message comes back after about 5 seconds, which seems reasonable if it's connecting and then disconnecting to save power. So I interpret that (perhaps incorrectly) as it's able to connect via Bluetooth.

Nonetheless, nothing happens. OneNote doesn't open. Pressing the button when the device is locked, in sleep mode, with the screen off or lock screen on does not cause OneNote to come up. Even if logged in with OneNote closed or open in the background on the desktop, it doesn't come up.

OneNote on the desktop prompted me to be the default notetaking app and I agreed to that. I also have the metro OneNote app installed.

I don't see any settings in Pen or the Tablet PC control panel applet to allow me to change what action is triggered by the OneNote button or verify it's set correctly. I don't know how the trigger works or if there's any way to verify it's setup correctly. Any help would be appreciated.

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Anonymous

My pen was not working on Windows Enterprise (did not open OneNote when I clicked pen button).

Here are the steps I followed to get my pen to work:

First, I made sure that OneNote desktop was the default, according to these instructions:

http://winsupersite.com/mobile-devices/surface-pro-3-tip-configure-which-onenote-use-pen

Then I applied this update:

Update Info

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2968599/en-us

Actual Update File

http://download.windowsupdate.com/d/msdownload/update/software/crup/2014/06/windows8.1-kb2968599-x64\_de4ca043bf6ba84330fd96cb374e801071c4b8aa.msu

I rebooted and tried the button but it still did not work.

So, then I unpaired and re-paired the pen according to these instructions:

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/support/touch-mouse-and-search/troubleshoot-surface-pen

After I did that, everything works well. Not sure if it was the result of the update or the combo of the update and re-pairing though. The double-click-to-take-a-snapshot feature works also now and is pretty cool too.

Observation: from the Windows lock screen the button click only goes to OneNote once you have logged into the machine. That is, if you do a fresh restart and click the button all it does it goes to the login screen. I guess that makes sense because if you have multiple accounts on the machine then how would it know which account it was supposed to open OneNote in.

Anyways, that's what worked for me. Good luck.

~Joe

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Anonymous

OK, after looking at all the variables in what could have changed a rather obvious one was found. The app version of One Note had been removed from our baseload, leaving only the desktop version.

The pen top functionality doesn't appear to work when only the desktop version is installed (or at least not on Enterprise) when I downloaded the app version from the windows store, the pen top functionality began working with that version. It is interesting that on my personal SP3 running Windows Pro 8.1 which has both installed, when I choose to make the desktop version my default version (never got this option on Enterprise) that all of the pen top functionality works. On the Enterprise unit, even if I go into the default file associations it doesn't even see the app version of OneNote?

So if you are using Enterprise 8.1 and you don't have the OneNote app version installed and your pen top functionality isn't working, try installing the app version. Once you have both versions of OneNote on your device, if you want to change which version of OneNote opens the easiest way is to install the Surface Hub app, which allows you to make some pen customizations.

So when we first tried our baseload using Enterprise 8.1 vs Pro 8.1 this fix worked just fine to restore the pen top functionality. However we appears the file was added to one of the Updates but the actual functionality of this patch is no longer working. The pen top does nothing on our SP3s with Enterprise installed on them, and when we try to add the msu file it says it is already installed.

I have 7 devices to deploy tomorrow and the last thing we need is basic core functionality like this to not be working. Does anyone have any suggestions or ideas?

I was having this EXACT problem. I hunted around for a couple of days and finally found the update that fixes it. Here is the info that fixed me up:

Update Info

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2968599/en-us

Actual Update File

http://download.windowsupdate.com/d/msdownload/update/software/crup/2014/06/windows8.1-kb2968599-x64_de4ca043bf6ba84330fd96cb374e801071c4b8aa.msu

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Answer accepted by question author

Anonymous

Hi jm2247,

Welcome to the community and thank you for bringing this question to us. I understand that your Pro 3 pen button is not functioning on Windows 8.1 Enterprise.

I understand this is may be not the most convenient way for you but I recommend contacting our Enterprise Support here. They will guide you toward the right direction.

Let us know if you have other question or concerns in the future.

Best Regards,

Clare

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51 additional answers

Anonymous

2014-06-22T00:35:19+00:00

By the way the pen should stay disconnected the whole time and only connect whenever you click in the top button.

Yes, that's what I'm observing.

It usually looks like this:

Then, when I press the pen button (on this screen so I can get the screenshot), nothing opens but the "Not connected" goes away as follows:

After 3-5 seconds, it goes back to the first image ("Not connected").

This leads me to hypothesize it's working properly on the Pen side and it's something with Windows/drivers/etc. that may need fixed, particularly around whatever should be recognizing the button press and triggering OneNote to open.

Since I installed Win 8.1 Enterprise instead of using the image the Surface Pro 3 came with, perhaps whatever is triggering OneNote to open (or the screen clipping on double-clicking the button) is not included in the driver pack at this link ("Surface Pro 3 - June 2014.zip") that enabled me to get things up and running on Win 8.1 Enterprise?

What you see in the BT configuration screen is how it works, that's why I believe that problem is with OneNote.
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Anonymous

2014-06-22T00:42:02+00:00

I think that your may have to refresh the SP3 to how it came from factory. The version of Windows 8.1 PRO that the SP3 is using may have been tweaked by MS in some ways and that's why that feature is not working. 😐
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