Expanding Your Territory with Write Anywhere

Feeling a little confined by the Writing Pad? A feature of Writing Pad called Write Anywhere enables you to use any part of the screen for a writing pad. For example, if you open Word and turn on Write Anywhere, rather than writing in the Writing Pad and sending it to Word, you can write on the Word window and your writing is automatically converted to text in the Word document.

This is especially helpful if you have a longer set of notes to write, where the Writing Pad might be too confined an area or the delay in sending text to the document is cumbersome.

Remember Windows Journal also offers a larger area where you can write directly in the application; the Write Anywhere feature essentially emulates Journal's functionality in other applications.

Tip Write Anywhere only accepts writing in English. (Sorry, no Japanese or ancient hieroglyphics, please.)

To turn on the Write Anywhere feature and use it, follow these steps:

With the Input Panel open, choose ToolsðOptions.

The Options dialog box appears.
Tap the Write Anywhere tab.

The Write Anywhere dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 4-14.

Figure 4-14: Control how the Write Anywhere feature functions from this dialog box.
Tap in the check box labeled Show the Turn on Write Anywhere Button on the Title Bar.
Tap OK.

A small pen shape, which is the Turn on Write Anywhere button, appears in the title bar of the Input Panel.
Open an application, such as WordPad or Excel and tap in the document to place your insertion point.
Move your pen up and down on the page.

As you do so, a writing line appears and moves up and down the page as you move your pen.
Write along the line.

When you pause for a moment, what you wrote is converted to text and inserted in the document at the insertion point.

Now you can write anywhere you like on the document and what you write goes wherever your insertion point is located. (Is that cool or what?)

Remember You can't select and edit text that's been converted until you turn off the Write Anywhere feature (by tapping the pen icon again).