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
    2016-02-27T16:53:11+00:00

    Thanks for the info. I have a Sony Vaio hybrid laptop that flattens down to a tablet, but even as a laptop I use the pen for pretty much everything. I still have a track pad, but it isn't designed for regular use.

    The ink feature is no doubt a good feature, but it just doesn't make sense not to be able to switch the damn thing off. It was probably something overlooked.

    I kept thinking about switching back to Open Office, but just never bothered each month, well now I can be bothered! There are occasional formatting problems between the 2 programmes, but nothing I can't work around. Open Office is a pretty good suite of office tools.

    I've just installed it and the spreadsheet works fine in it.

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-02-27T13:53:32+00:00

    I went to a Microsoft store yesterday and asked their staff to revert my Office to 2013. Notice I'm not saying 'downgrade' because 2016 cannot be called an upgrade. So my Surface 3 is usable again. 

    I asked the staffer who helped me, if they had a lot of complaints about 2016, and she said no. I guess most people use the keyboard and touchpad to work with Office apps, so for them the inking-only pen is a good feature. A few of us, however, the ones posting on these forums, use the pen as a second mouse, and for us this functionality has been destroyed. 

    Reverting to 2013 is a tricky process, and it took us 2 attempts to get it right. I hope the MS people on this forum provide a step-by-step for those who don't have a MS store nearby. And please announce here when the pen functionality has been restored, so we can allow the 2016 upgrade.

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-02-27T13:20:03+00:00

    What a stupid thing to do. One minute I am selecting cells with my pen, next minute I can only draw dots and lines across my spread sheet. AND there is no way to stop this from happening.

    If you are going to introduce new features at least make them optional. If you are not going to fix it soon I may as well cancel my subscription and go back to open office.

    Get your act together MS, you make enough money out of us, at least give us a product that is useable.

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-02-26T22:23:45+00:00

    So when is this update forthcoming? Right now, Excel on my Surface 3 is pretty much unusable for me.

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