Forum Discussion
OneNote for Windows 10: White colour is now light gray, duplicates pen upon changing
Hi!
The white colour option for pens, in the drop-down menu, is now a slightly gray colour (fig. 1). Any time I've ever used this colour on any page has been changed to that gray.
(fig. 1: weird gray colour.)
When I use the black shades in 'More Colours' to change the pen colour to white instead, it creates a new pen with the same light-gray colour (fig.2). If I attempt to change the colour using the new white colour option, below the 'More Colours' option, it does the same thing! (fig.3)
(fig.2 : selecting the pure white shade, with the desired drawing selected.)
(fig.3 : the new pen created, in the same colour.)
If I then click on the original pen to change it back, it makes a new pen (duplicates the original?) with the original thickness, and it won't let me select the original pen!!
But if I open the same, synced page in OneNote 2016, all the light-gray drawing on the page is the correct white!!! (fig.4)
(fig.4 : dun dun dun!!!)
A baffling mystery.
I have reinstalled OneNote for Windows 10, to no avail. Any idea what's going on?
11 Replies
January 2024 still not fixed.
Another workaround is to use Word and then use the snipping tool to paste it back into OneNote. Microsoft Word has a similar drawing tool, but the white pen does not become grey, so you can white out stuff perfectly.
Alpappo , It looks like this is still broken as of 02 July 2023, but I found a close work-around. Not ideal, but it is very close for me. Select the "why are you gray instead of the white that I asked for" pen, and modify it so that one of the RGB values is 254 instead of 255 (254-255-255), and you'll have an "off-white" that is almost perfectly white. On my Surface Pro, I can't tell the difference. Again, not perfect, but it works for my needs.
If Microsoft wants a default white pen to be gray, fine - but I wish they would at least allow users to manually set what they actually want.
you made My day!
Thx a lot!
Works perfectly
I am having the same issue, 2 months later... i really hope this gets resovled
lambda137
This is clearly still an issue into November 2021. I would like to point out one work around that I have been using since microsoft decided to sht the bed on this one. When I need a white pen is usually to use it as a white out over some image that I have pasted in. To avoid the failed grey pen feature that microsoft graced us with, I use snip tool to cut out a blank white block from the page and paste it over the stuff I want to white-out.To microsoft:
Nobody ever wanted you to change white to grey. Who ruined this part of the app? Fire them please.
Microsoft did not say this but a lot of people at my school would use the white pen to white out questions they didn't want to do. Maybe that's why, that's the only reason I can think of, because it really is a stupid feature. I guess they figured anti-cheat is more important than having a true white.
Same here, first experienced it a couple of days ago, would really want know how to fix this!
