Pencil Tool greyed out

[larryg]

how many problems start this way...."was working fine, all of a sudden..."  Well my pencil tool is greyed out even though the object is selected.  Created a new file with just a rectangle, same problem.  This is on my laptop (SP7)and I confirmed that using the same file and same software on my desktop works fine.  I did a office full repair, no change.  Open to any suggestions as I'm working remotely with this limitation which is problematic.

thanks in advance,

Larry