Notepad — Microsoft Windows plain-text editor

Notepad is a simple plain-text editor bundled with Microsoft Windows. It edits .txt and other text files, supports basic search and encodings, and is often used for quick edits, scripts and hand-written HTML.

Overview

Notepad is a lightweight plain-text editor that has been included with Microsoft Windows since the 1980s. It provides a minimal interface for creating, viewing and editing unformatted text files without the page layout, styles or advanced features of a full word processor. Because it opens quickly and has a simple feature set, Notepad is commonly used for quick notes, editing configuration files, small scripts, and drafting text that must remain unformatted.

Features

Notepad is intentionally simple and focuses on direct manipulation of plaintext. Typical features found across modern versions include basic editing operations (cut, copy, paste), find and replace, simple word wrap, and the ability to change the displayed font for readability. Many builds also include controls for file encodings and rudimentary line navigation. Notepad does not embed fonts, formatting, images or other rich content within saved files; saved files are plain text only.

File formats and encoding

Notepad commonly opens and saves files with a .txt extension but can work with any file whose contents are plain text, including configuration files (.ini, .cfg), batch scripts (.bat, .cmd) and simple markup or code files saved with extensions such as .html, .css or .js. It typically exposes options for choosing a text encoding when saving so that characters from different languages and scripts can be preserved. Over time, support for Unicode encodings such as UTF-8 and UTF-16 has been added to improve compatibility with non‑ASCII text.

History and development

Notepad has been supplied as a small accessory bundled with successive releases of Microsoft Windows. Its core design has remained stable: a minimal editor that is easy to launch and use. Microsoft has made incremental updates to improve character encoding support, handle different line endings and refine the user interface while preserving the program's lightweight nature. Because it is distributed with the operating system, Notepad is a widely available tool on most Windows installations.

Common uses

Notepad is used for tasks that benefit from plain text: editing system configuration files, writing small scripts, preparing quick lists or notes, and creating or editing simple HTML pages by hand. Authors who prefer to write markup directly can use Notepad to compose HTML and then open the file in a web browser to test. Another common use is to paste formatted content into Notepad to strip away styling so only raw text remains for pasting elsewhere.

How it differs from other editors

Notepad is not designed as a development environment: it lacks syntax highlighting, multi-tab editing, plugin systems, project management, and advanced search or refactoring tools that many modern code editors provide. For complex coding or large projects, programmers typically choose third-party text editors or integrated development environments. For simple, immediate edits and system-level text files, Notepad's minimal interface and ubiquity are advantages.

Tips and keyboard shortcuts

Common keyboard shortcuts include Ctrl+S to save, Ctrl+O to open, Ctrl+F to find, Ctrl+H to replace and Ctrl+A to select all. When saving files that contain non-ASCII characters, choose an appropriate encoding to avoid character corruption. If you plan to author HTML by hand, save the file with an .html extension and open it in a browser to preview the result. Many users keep Notepad for quick, temporary edits and use more feature-rich editors for heavier work.