Does Microsoft Word 2013 have palm/hand rejection? If not, can anyone recommend a simple drawing program?

Question

Just bought a Surface Pro and have been trying to figure out how to do palm/hand rejection in MS Word 2013. It looks like it only works in OneNote. I am just looking for a paint/drawing program where I can start drawing structures and have them saved. Of course, this is where I would need the palm/hand rejection feature. It looks like only OneNote is able to do it but in MS Word 2013, the palm/hand rejection feature is not available (or turned off by default?). If so, can anyone recommend any solutions or just a simple drawing program? I haven't tried MS Paint yet.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Just bought a Surface Pro and have been trying to figure out how to do palm/hand rejection in MS Word 2013. It looks like it only works in OneNote. I am just looking for a paint/drawing program where I can start drawing structures and have them saved. Of course, this is where I would need the palm/hand rejection feature. It looks like only OneNote is able to do it but in MS Word 2013, the palm/hand rejection feature is not available (or turned off by default?). If so, can anyone recommend any solutions or just a simple drawing program? I haven't tried MS Paint yet.

Thanks!

With the Multitouch Panel and Wacom Feel Digitizer on the same panel, Palm Rejection is built in at the OS level and should be available in any program, as you can see it doesn't work as intended in every situation.

The best way to get the palm rejection is to make sure the tip of the stylus touches the screen before any part of your hand, lifting the stylus while your palm is there will invoke the capacitive multitouch so you may get some ink bleed (this is where art/writing programs that use the MS Ink API excel is they compensate for this).

It takes some practice, but once you get used to it you'll find that this works well.

Answer 2

Palm/hand rejection is controlled by the digitizer itself and you can probably look in the Control Panel and try to find the digitizer control (probably under HID) and see if that option is there.

For drawing, any Office program has drawing capabilities with the exception of Access.  There are a lot of drawing programs in the Store along with MS Paint as well.

Best way to find out, just try it.  Chances are, probably NO.  That feature is not on a bulk of digitizers on the market for simplicity but your higher end tablets will.

Now, with that being said, it depends on your drawing program or any other program if the digitizer circuit is even being used during the drawing process.  The touchscreen itself is a digitizer on its own, even if it is a simple one.  Your stylus pen relies on the digitizer for function but does not always require the digitizer itself.  It depends on the program you use.  You will never know if it is in play or not.  The best way to find out is just experiment with it by placing the stylus pen on the surface and let your hand touch the screen at the same time and see if it ignores your hand input.

The digitizer comes in handy when you want to convert hand written text into computer text much like OCR.

Just experiment with it and if you have Office installed, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Publisher are drawing programs or have drawing capabilities built into them.  MS Paint also has vector graphics as well.

If you want Corel level graphics drawing capabilities but don't want to pay the price, try Xara at http://www.xara.com/us/?gclid=CL3hvej1q7kCFZFFMgodAGEAlA.  That program "used" to be Corel Draw a long time ago when Corel bought them but were sold off and xomebody else owns them now.  I have that program and works great with Windows 8 and is fast even with large projects.

Answer 3

So, do you know why the palm rejection works on OneNote and not Word 2013? That was what I was trying to figure out.

Answer 4

OneNote is probably controlling the digitizer.  word would not and is probably not using the digitizer circuit when you are drawing.  I don't have a Pro model myself to test it out but there is no way to tell.

A real digitizer (complete setup) would have 'hotspots' on the screen for menu functions for the digitizer.  I don't think the Pro has that.

Word is using your stylus as a mouse input device and not as a digitizer pen.  A little confusing but the stylus pen requires the digitizer circuit to operate but does not always use the digitizer in all programs.  It depends on the program itself to call it up.  OneNote was designed to use a digitizer much like Digital Ink.

Answer 5

Are we able to change this in the settings somewhere for Word, PowerPoint, etc? To just recognize the stylus as a digitizer pen, ignoring any mouse/hand input?