Surface Pen does not select cell on touch in Office 2016

Anonymous

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.

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Anonymous

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:

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.
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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67 additional answers

Anonymous

2016-02-28T08:04:28+00:00

Seriously, I'm freaking out right now because I have to go 10 times slower doing work-arounds to get any work done. I'm a writer and an editor. Not having a functional mouse on my Surface Pro does NOT work for me. Microsoft, you can't give us a stylus as a mouse for years then 'accidentally' take it away overnight and shrug about fixing it. I have never had a use for the draw feature, and given that touch has been glitchy ever since I upgraded to 10, not having my stylus is not an option.
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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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Anonymous

2016-02-26T18:03:13+00:00

Actually the Select Objects button does work if you are using touch or mouse inking, it allows you to stop inking with your finger. An upcoming update will make this more clear by changing it into a start/stop touch inking button, so it'll be more clear what it does and that it doesn't affect the pen.

That doesn't address the issue you are having that you'd also like to use the pen as a pointer though, so we're looking at how best to do that at the same time.
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Anonymous

2016-02-24T23:14:20+00:00

Hello,

Welcome to Microsoft Community and thank you for posting your query.

I suggest you to refer to the suggestion mentioned by Dan Parish in below mentioned link on similar issue and check if it helps.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2016-powerpoint/after-the-latest-office-update-powerpoint-get/8d6a4d6a-a1e9-4f01-8847-c988866c1fd7

I hope the above information helps. Let us know if you need further assistance.

Thank you.
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