Surface Pen does not select cell on touch in Office 2016

Anonymous
2016-02-24T21:01:42+00:00

With the last update of Office, my Surface Pen now only goes into Draw mode within an Excel or Word document. I've tried to look at all settings and can't see a place to change this back to what it was. It's nice to be able to select draw mode, but I can't seem to turn it off, and/or not have draw be the default. 

I want to be able to use the pen to touch in a cell (in Excel) and have it just select the cell for editing/input like it used to do. With every touch it is just drawing a line or dot.

In Word, the same thing happens. I used to be able to just touch the screen with my pen to show the cursor, just like a mouse click, and now it only draws.

Basically, I see it's the same problem in both Word and Excel. I just want the old functionality back and be able to use the draw function only when I select it. 

Can anyone help me? This is really driving me crazy.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2016-02-29T20:16:55+00:00

UPDATED: 3/15/2016

Thank you again for all your feedback and patience as we work on the fixes for the ink mode feature. Good news! Our engineering team is now rolling out the changes to enable the pen to function like it did before to Office Insiders and should soon be available to all.

For more information, please see latest post from Dan Parish on 3/15 in this thread: After the latest Office update PowerPoint get locked in ink mode

Lastly, If you want to see features and fixes like this earlier and help us make Office better by giving us feedback, consider joining the Insider Program.

Thanks,

Michelle V.

Hi everyone,

We appreciate your comments and engagement on the MS Community. We've been actively monitoring these threads and working to incorporate your feedback into our product updates. Please see the latest response from Dan Parish on this main thread: After the latest Office update PowerPoint get locked in ink mode, which I also copied and pasted down below.

Thanks,

Michelle V

Office Team

Copied from After the latest Office update PowerPoint get locked in ink mode:

I wanted to first thank all of you for your feedback both here, and on our UserVoice site.  We’ve heard you loud and clear, and as a result we are actively working on two changes:

  1. For people that want to use the pen as a precise pointer temporarily, we will introduce the ability to do that via a button on the Draw tab.  This will keep the new default of having the pen ink on the document canvas, but give the ability to use the pen to do selection when needed.
  2. For people that want or need to use the pen like a mouse by default, we will also add a new preference to the Options dialog that will allow you to restore the previous behavior.  If you want to ink, that will be easier than before because you’ll be able to just tap a pen on the Draw tab and start inking, but you will be able to set your default behavior to be that the pen selects, just like it was before the update.

We are actively working on making these changes so that we can get them out to you as soon as possible.  Note that you may see #2 (the preference in the Options dialog) appear first, because we are prioritizing getting that change to you based on your feedback.

I will keep this post updated with the latest status, or you can follow along at one (or all) of the three relevant UserVoice topics: Word, Excel, PowerPoint.

In addition, if you’d like to get these changes even before they are officially released to everyone, please consider joining our Office Insidersprogram.  It’s a great way to preview the upcoming changes and help provide us with feedback early.

Thanks again,

Dan

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-03-01T18:48:25+00:00

    Thank you for this post. Due to the small resolution on the surface, I also primarily use by pen as a mouse. For any intermediate or advance users of excel, I can only imagine the pen/drawing function is unusable. This will become a major issue, I just noticed the change today. Microsoft is going to get an earful about this issue. Thought I was going crazy.

    Seems like they can just fix the select objects button. I will revert to the old version and also turn off updates. I think I have spent more time reading up on changes then actually working. Ready to go back to Office out of the box.

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-03-01T02:24:34+00:00

    The best fix is to just revert to the previous version and disable all automatic upgrades. I did it and I'm back to using Excel with the pen as a pointer! I posted the instructions in an earlier reply.

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-02-29T22:56:34+00:00

    Yep, not working for me either. I was hoping that they meant a fix is coming :-/

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-02-29T22:38:34+00:00

    I don't think so given that tab and button are present in Excel, Word, PowerPoint, etc. And both she and Dan are implying this is a solution, but for many of us, that isn't the case.

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