Using the pen

MoboCalc translates your written entries into text, numbers, and formulas that can be sent to Excel using a technique called handwriting recognition.

The accuracy of handwriting recognition depends in large part on the quality of your writing. If you (or your friends or colleagues) can't read your writing, MoboCalc may have difficulty understanding it as well.

Here are a few important tips that can help improve the accuracy of your results:

•	Write as neatly as possible along a reasonably straight line.

•	Write in a natural order. Don't go back to extend lines or try to make characters look better, since that will actually make your results less accurate. You can easily correct most errors once your handwritten entry has been recognized.

•	Print formulas and numbers without connecting the characters. Cursive script can only be used for text entries or quoted text strings within a formula.

•	Use the Eraser tool or the eraser tip of your pen to erase all or part of your entry before it is recognized.

•	If you want to start over, tap the Cancel button to clear your entry.

Especially when learning MoboCalc, it's a good idea to verify your entries before sending them to Excel by tapping the Check button. This translates your written entry into text and displays the result for you to review. If you notice a mistake, you can correct it using the editing tools described in Editing cell contents. Once your entry is correct, you can send it to Excel by tapping the Enter button or one of the navigation buttons.

Sometimes you may find that an entry is recognized correctly except for one or two characters or words. If you use the Check button to verify your entry, you can often fix these mistakes by tapping the character or word that wasn't recognized correctly to request an alternate recognition result.

Each recognition produces several possible results, and the first result you see is simply the recognizer's best guess. If it's first guess is wrong, it may still have the correct answer as one of its alternate results.

Once you move away from a cell by tapping Enter or one or the navigation buttons, alternate results are discarded, so it is important to check your entries first.

Many characters look very similar, especially in handwritten form. For example, capital "O", lowercase "o", and zero "0" are easily confusable, and handwritten forms of capital "I", lowercase "l", and the number "1" are often identical. MoboCalc attempts to use surrounding characters to resolve any ambiguities, but it's a good idea to watch for errors in these special cases.

Occasionally, you may get a result that is much different than you intended. This is usually due to an ambiguous character near the start of your entry, such as an equal sign that isn't written clearly at the beginning of a formula. In this case, the best approach is to erase the result by tapping the Cancel button and try again.

MoboCalc recognizes your handwriting by analyzing the "strokes" that you write - in other words, how you form a character rather than its exact appearance on the screen. Your input is compared with samples from thousands of other users to see if it matches a recognizable pattern for a particular character. For many characters, several different forms can recognized.

MoboCalc uses two different handwriting recognizers: the built-in Microsoft recognizer for text, numeric, date, and time values, and a custom recognizer for formulas. Therefore, your results may vary slightly depending on the type of entry you are writing.