How to use a Wacom tablet to draw shapes on Microsoft Power Point

Question

I have Power Point 2016 (16.16) running on a Mac with High Sierra and the latest Wacom driver installed on the laptop.

The point is although I can control the input with the Wacom pen, I can't find a way to use it to draw anything. I have seen videos where there was an Ink/Pens menu but they don't show up anywhere.

Answer 1

Have you checked the pen and ink settings for Mac? It's also possible that it might be turned off. Check your Wacom tablet properties as well. The pen/ink menu is probably under the draw tab for Powerpoint. A quick google search led me to this site for Microsoft products I hope this link helps you a bit.

Answer 2

Powerpoint has allways allowed drawing, but it has not been available in a friendly way as in painting programs.

I have quite old powerpoint where the drawing tools are not visible until one selects them in tool customization to be shown.

There's 2 major subtypes of freehand drawing:

• inserting freehand lines. It has been well hidden in Draw tools. It's a subclass of lines in AutoShapes. The result is a vector path. Editing them is possible by moving the path controls. Hopefully the starting is not hidden as well in a modern Powerpoint.
• ink drawing. It has own toolbar. The pen and ink can be selected after opening the dialogs

Here's a sample screenshot. Ink drawing tools have been selected to be visible as tools customization option, the color menu has been opened and there's also a random shape drawn with Wacom. It's much smoother than after trying the same with a mouse.