Writing Pad missing controls, options, features

[Brucewh]

Handwriting recognition was great in Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, but in Windows 10 (on my system) it is broken, crippled, and unusable. The Writing Pad on my Windows 10 Tablet PC is missing several buttons and controls, and the ability to set any options, as you can see here:



I don't know what's wrong -- :eck: -- but this is bad! Apart from being an ugly black/dark grey pad, all of the elements necessary to use it effectively are absent. I can print or write longhand, but then I can't send the text to insert point. The capabilities I had on my Windows 8.1 Tablet PC (now belonging to another) are almost all missing, and they shouldn't be.

Windows help pages, and every other page I could find through Google, say that I should be able to see the end of it at the left edge of the screen, and pull it out when I want it. Well, that doesn't happen. I'm also supposed to have a character edit mode, see recognition result, perform editaction like joining or splitting words, and so forth. Again, no.

All that happens is that I have to bring up the writing pad manually. My handwriting appears on the line, but nothing happens, visibly, after that. It isn't converted to text. I can't correct mis-recognized words. Hitting the Enter button in the pad will sometimes send the text version of what I wrote, but mostly it just sends a CrLf to the focus point.

Handwriting recognition is essential to me away from (I rely upon speech recognition on my desktop machine at home). I would be finitely grateful if someone could help me solve this problem so that I can use my computer for handwriting input.

Oh ... Windows 10 came installed on my computer. Clean install, not an upgrade.

 

[rbcameron]

I agree that the handwriting panel on Windows 10 is less usable than the one on Windows 8.1, for all the reasons you mentioned. However, I have used it fairly successfully with OneNote. As long as you have the insertion point where you want it in OneNote, you should be able to write text & insert it.

As you write each word, you should see two things:

1. the word and several alternatives appear in the black area at the top of the handwriting panel
2. The word appears in OneNote with a squiggly underline

You can use the space button or the enter button on the handwriting panel to confirm the text. Unlike the 8.1 panel you can only correct the most recent word by choosing among the alternatives shown before you confirm the text. It doesn't seem to be possible to use the panel to correct text already entered.

Word 2016 behaves similarly. What program are you using?

- richard