Windows Notepad is a simple
text editor
A text editor is a type of computer program that edits plain text. Such programs are sometimes known as "notepad" software (e.g. Windows Notepad). Text editors are provided with operating systems and software development packages, and can be us ...
for
Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
; it creates and edits
plain text
In computing, plain text is a loose term for data (e.g. file contents) that represent only characters of readable material but not its graphical representation nor other objects (floating-point numbers, images, etc.). It may also include a limit ...
documents. First released in 1983 to commercialize the
computer mouse
A computer mouse (plural mice, sometimes mouses) is a hand-held pointing device that detects two-dimensional motion relative to a surface. This motion is typically translated into the motion of a pointer on a display, which allows a smooth c ...
in
MS-DOS
MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...
, Notepad has been part of every version of Windows ever since.
History
In May 1983, at the
COMDEX
COMDEX (an abbreviation of COMputer Dealers' EXhibition) was a computer expo trade show held in the Las Vegas Valley of Nevada, United States, each November from 1979 to 2003. It was one of the largest computer trade shows in the world, usually ...
computer expo in
Atlanta
Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...
, Microsoft introduced the Multi-Tool Notepad, a
mouse
A mouse ( : mice) is a small rodent. Characteristically, mice are known to have a pointed snout, small rounded ears, a body-length scaly tail, and a high breeding rate. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse (''Mus musculus' ...
-based text editor
Richard Brodie had created, along with the $195
Microsoft Mouse
The Microsoft Mouse is a computer mouse released by Microsoft in 1983. It is the first mouse released by the company, and it was bundled with Microsoft Word, Notepad, and an on-screen teaching tutorial for an initial price of $195.
Nicknamed the ...
. Also appearing at that COMDEX was the
Multi-Tool Word
Microsoft Word is a word processing software developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name ''Multi-Tool Word'' for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms includin ...
, a
word processor
A word processor (WP) is a device or computer program that provides for input, editing, formatting, and output of text, often with some additional features.
Word processor (electronic device), Early word processors were stand-alone devices ded ...
that
Charles Simonyi
Charles Simonyi (; hu, Simonyi Károly, ; born September 10, 1948) is a Hungarian-American software architect. He started and led Microsoft's applications group, where he built the first versions of Microsoft Office.
He co-founded and led In ...
was developing and supported the mouse. Most visitors had never heard of a computer mouse before.
The mouse began shipping in July. Initial sales were modest because it had no use other than running the programs included in the box (a tutorial, a practice app, and Multi-Tool Notepad.)
The Multi-Tool product line began with
expert system
In artificial intelligence, an expert system is a computer system emulating the decision-making ability of a human expert.
Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by reasoning through bodies of knowledge, represented mainly as if ...
s for the
Multiplan
Multiplan is spreadsheet program developed by Microsoft and introduced in 1982 as a competitor to VisiCalc.
Multiplan was released first for computers running CP/M; it was developed using a Microsoft proprietary p-code C compiler as part of ...
spreadsheet. On the suggestion of
Rowland Hanson
Rowland Hanson (born 1935) is the current Chairman of CRH & Associates and the CEO of the HMC Company. He is known for his time at Microsoft, where he convinced the company to name their new graphical user interface (GUI) "Windows" over the origina ...
, Microsoft dropped the Multi-Tool brand name. Hanson's rationale was that "the brand is the
hero
A hero (feminine: heroine) is a real person or a main fictional character who, in the face of danger, combats adversity through feats of ingenuity, courage, or Physical strength, strength. Like other formerly gender-specific terms (like ...
" and people wouldn't automatically associate "Multi-Tool" with Microsoft. As a result, the Multi-Tool Notepad and the Multi-Tool Word became Windows Notepad and
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word is a word processing software developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name ''Multi-Tool Word'' for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms includin ...
, respectively. (Hanson also convinced
Bill Gates
William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions ...
to rename "Interface Manager" to "Windows" before the release of
Windows 1.0
Windows 1.0 is the first major release of Microsoft Windows, a family of graphical operating systems for personal computers developed by Microsoft. It was first released to manufacturing in the United States on November 20, 1985, while the Euro ...
.)
Since then, Notepad has been part of Microsoft Windows.
Change in development model
Since the introduction of
Microsoft Store
Microsoft Store (formerly known as Windows Store) is a digital distribution platform operated by Microsoft. It started as an app store for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 as the primary means of distributing Universal Windows Platform apps ...
in 2012, Microsoft has converted some of the built-in Windows apps into
Microsoft Store apps (e.g.,
Sticky Notes), so that they could be updated independent of Windows releases. Within three years, Notepad has appeared on Microsoft Store thrice. The first time was in August 2019; it vanished shortly thereafter.
This version required Windows 10
preview build 18963.
During this short-lived presence on the Store, technology news blogs speculated that Microsoft intended to de-couple Notepad's life-cycle from that of
Windows 10
Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on J ...
and update it more frequently through Microsoft Store.
Notepad appeared on Microsoft Store for a second time in April 2020, this time, sporting a new logo. It runs on the preview versions of Windows 10,
build number 19541 or later.
On 16 February 2022, Microsoft started rolling out a new and redesigned version of the Notepad to all Windows 11 users. This version had Dark Mode added and a new Find and Replace flyout with the same functionality. Notepad is now available in the Microsoft Store in both Windows 10 and 11.
Features
Notepad is a
text editor
A text editor is a type of computer program that edits plain text. Such programs are sometimes known as "notepad" software (e.g. Windows Notepad). Text editors are provided with operating systems and software development packages, and can be us ...
, i.e., an app specialized in editing
plain text
In computing, plain text is a loose term for data (e.g. file contents) that represent only characters of readable material but not its graphical representation nor other objects (floating-point numbers, images, etc.). It may also include a limit ...
. It can edit
text file
A text file (sometimes spelled textfile; an old alternative name is flatfile) is a kind of computer file that is structured as a sequence of lines of electronic text. A text file exists stored as data within a computer file system. In operating ...
s (bearing the ".txt"
filename extension
A filename extension, file name extension or file extension is a suffix to the name of a computer file (e.g., .txt, .docx, .md). The extension indicates a characteristic of the file contents or its intended use. A filename extension is typically d ...
) and compatible formats, such as
batch file
Batch may refer to:
Food and drink
* Batch (alcohol), an alcoholic fruit beverage
* Batch loaf, a type of bread popular in Ireland
* A dialect term for a bread roll used in North Warwickshire, Nuneaton and Coventry, as well as on the Wirral ...
s,
INI files, and
log file
In computing, logging is the act of keeping a log of events that occur in a computer system, such as problems, errors or just information on current operations. These events may occur in the operating system or in other software. A message or lo ...
s. Notepad can read and write plain texts
encoded
In communications and information processing, code is a system of rules to convert information—such as a letter, word, sound, image, or gesture—into another form, sometimes shortened or secret, for communication through a communication ...
in
ASCII
ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because of ...
,
UTF-8
UTF-8 is a variable-width encoding, variable-length character encoding used for electronic communication. Defined by the Unicode Standard, the name is derived from ''Unicode'' (or ''Universal Coded Character Set'') ''Transformation Format 8-bit'' ...
, and
UTF-16
UTF-16 (16-bit computing, 16-bit Unicode Transformation Format) is a character encoding capable of encoding all 1,112,064 valid code points of Unicode (in fact this number of code points is dictated by the design of UTF-16). The encoding is variab ...
. It supports both left-to-right and right-to-left based languages.
Notepad offers only the most basic text manipulation functions, such as finding and replacing text. Until
Windows ME
Windows Millennium Edition, or Windows Me (marketed with the pronunciation of the pronoun "me"), is an operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. It is the successor to Windo ...
, there were almost no keyboard shortcuts and no line-counting feature. Starting with
Windows 2000
Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), releas ...
, shortcuts for common commands like "New", "Open", and "Save" were added, as well as a status bar with a line counter (available only when word-wrap is disabled). Before
Windows 10 version 1809
Windows 10 October 2018 Update (also known as version 1809 and codenamed "Redstone 5") is the sixth major update to Windows 10 and the fifth in a series of updates under the Redstone codenames. It carries the build number 10.0.17763.
Version hist ...
, Notepad could not properly interpret
Unix
Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...
-style or
Mac-style
newline
Newline (frequently called line ending, end of line (EOL), next line (NEL) or line break) is a control character or sequence of control characters in character encoding specifications such as ASCII, EBCDIC, Unicode, etc. This character, or a ...
characters. Windows 10 version 1809 also introduced the keyboard shortcut (deletes the previous word), zoom functionality, the ability to zoom in and out, and the "Search with
Bing
Bing most often refers to:
* Bing Crosby (1903–1977), American singer
* Microsoft Bing, a web search engine
Bing may also refer to:
Food and drink
* Bing (bread), a Chinese flatbread
* Bing (soft drink), a UK brand
* Bing cherry, a varie ...
" function.
Improving performance has been the main focus of Notepad's development. As part of this effort, Notepad is capable of reading text files even when other apps have acquired a
range-based lock on the file.
On
Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturin ...
and earlier, Notepad renders text files in the
Fixedsys
''Fixedsys'' is a family of raster monospaced fonts. The name means ''fixed system'', because its glyphs are monospace or fixed-width (although bolded characters are wider than non-bolded, unlike other monospace fonts such as Courier). It is t ...
font
In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design.
In mod ...
. Starting with
Windows NT 4.0
Windows NT 4.0 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It is the direct successor to Windows NT 3.51, which was released to manufacturing on July 31, 1996, and then to retail ...
and
Windows 98
Windows 98 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. The second operating system in the 9x line, it is the successor to Windows 95, and was released to ...
, it allows users to choose their own font to display the text. They cannot, however, select individual parts of the text and change their fonts. Its default font changed to
Lucida Console
Lucida (pronunciation: ) is an extended family of related typefaces designed by Charles Bigelow (type designer), Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes and released from 1984 onwards. The family is intended to be extremely legible when printed at small ...
on
Windows 2000
Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), releas ...
, and
Consolas
Consolas is a monospaced typeface designed by Luc(as) de Groot. It is a part of the ClearType Font Collection, a suite of fonts that take advantage of Microsoft's ClearType font rendering technology. It has been included with Windows since Window ...
on
Windows 8
Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012; it was subsequently made available for downl ...
.
Notepad can print files. It allows customizing headers, footers, and margins before printing. The date, file name, and other information can be placed in the headers and footers with various codes consisting of an ampersand ('&') followed by a letter.
Notepad accepts text from the Windows
clipboard
A clipboard is a thin, rigid board with a clip at the top for holding paper in place. A clipboard is typically used to support paper with one hand while writing on it with the other, especially when other writing surfaces are not available. Th ...
, but only in the CF_TEXT format. It strips the pasted text of any embedded font and style information. One could temporarily paste formatted text into Notepad, then immediately copy it again to obtain the raw text. The app also has a simple logging function. Each time it opens a file with ".LOG" on its first line, the app inserts a timestamp on the file's last line.
Limitations
Notepad used a built-in
window class
In computer programming, a window class is fundamental to the Microsoft Windows (Win16, Win32, and Win64) operating systems and its Application Programming Interface (API).
The structure provides a template from which windows may be created ...
named ''EDIT''. The maximum file size Notepad can open depends on operating system limitations on the size of the ''EDIT'' window class, with a different limit in each version of Windows. Because of this limitation, on
Windows 3.0
Windows 3.0 is the third major release of Microsoft Windows, launched in 1990. It features a new graphical user interface (GUI) where applications are represented as clickable icons, as opposed to the list of file names seen in its predeces ...
,
Windows 3.1
Windows 3.1 is a major release of Microsoft Windows. It was released to manufacturing on April 6, 1992, as a successor to Windows 3.0.
Like its predecessors, the Windows 3.1 series ran as a shell on top of MS-DOS. Codenamed Janus, Windows 3 ...
, and
Windows 3.11
Windows 3.1 is a major release of Microsoft Windows. It was released to manufacturing on April 6, 1992, as a successor to Windows 3.0.
Like its predecessors, the Windows 3.1 series ran as a shell on top of MS-DOS. Codenamed Janus, Windows 3 ...
, Notepad could not open files larger than 54
KB. (Microsoft recommended using another text editor for opening files larger than 45 KB.) This limit was extended to 64 KB in
Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturin ...
, with users now directed to
WordPad
WordPad is the basic word processor that has been included with almost all versions of Microsoft Windows from Windows 95 onwards. It is more advanced than Windows Notepad, and simpler than Microsoft Word and Microsoft Works (last updated in 2007) ...
for larger files. On
Windows XP
Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...
, Notepad was limited to 32
MB and declined to open bigger files. On
Windows 11
Windows 11 is the latest major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system, released in October 2021. It is a free upgrade to its predecessor, Windows 10 (2015), and is available for any Windows 10 devices that meet the new Windows 11 ...
, Notepad uses the
RichEdit The Text Object Model (TOM) is a Microsoft Windows API that provides developers with object-based rich text manipulation interfaces. It is implemented through COM, and can be accessed through Microsoft Word or additionally through the RichEdit cont ...
control. The size limit was raised to about 1
GB, and attempting to open any file larger than that shows a
dialog box
The dialog box (also called dialogue box (non-U.S. English), message box or simply dialog) is a graphical control element in the form of a small window that communicates information to the user and prompts them for a response.
Dialog boxes ar ...
suggesting that the user open it with a different text editor.
Unicode detection
On the
Windows NT family
Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released on July 27, 1993. It is a processor-independent, multiprocessing and multi-user operating system.
The first version of Wind ...
of operating systems (including
Windows 2000
Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), releas ...
and
Windows XP
Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...
), Notepad can detect Unicode files even when they lack a
byte order mark
The byte order mark (BOM) is a particular usage of the special Unicode character, , whose appearance as a magic number at the start of a text stream can signal several things to a program reading the text:
* The byte order, or endianness, of th ...
. To do this, it calls the
IsTextUnicode()
function of the
Windows API
The Windows API, informally WinAPI, is Microsoft's core set of application programming interfaces (APIs) available in the Microsoft Windows operating systems. The name Windows API collectively refers to several different platform implementations th ...
. Until
Windows Vista
Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...
, this function was imperfect, incorrectly identifying some all-lowercase
ASCII
ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because of ...
text as UTF-16. As a result, Notepad interpreted a file containing a phrase like "aaaa aaa aaa aaaaa" ("4-3-3-5") as a two-byte-encoded Unicode text file. If a font with support for Chinese was installed, nine Chinese characters (桴獩愠灰挠湡戠敲歡) would display. Otherwise, it would display square
substitute character
In computer data, a substitute character (␚) is a control character that is used to pad transmitted data in order to send it in blocks of fixed size, or to stand in place of a character that is recognized to be invalid, erroneous or unreprese ...
s instead of Chinese characters. This issue was resolved on Windows Vista and newer.
Competing software
Notepad lacks many basic features available in other text editors, such as block selection and
MDI. There are many third-party replacements for Notepad with additional functionality, such as
AkelPad
AkelPad is a small, expandable text editor for Microsoft Windows.
AkelPad is distributed as free and open-source software, hosted on SourceForge where it has been downloaded more than 3 million times.
Unicode and codepages
AkelPad handles ...
,
Metapad
Metapad is an open-source text editor for Microsoft Windows 9x/NT/XP/Vista/7, developed by Alexander Davidson since 1999. The aim of Metapad is to provide a near drop-in replacement of Notepad in Windows. Metapad was distributed as freeware fo ...
,
Notepad++
Notepad++ is a text and source code editor for use with Microsoft Windows. It supports tabbed editing, which allows working with multiple open files in a single window. The product's name comes from the C postfix increment operator.
Notepad++ ...
, and
TED Notepad
TED Notepad is freeware portable text editor software for Microsoft Windows, developed by Juraj Šimlovič since 2001, originally as a school project. It looks similar to Windows Notepad, but provides additional features, including experimental ...
, which include features such as
syntax coloring,
code folding
Code or text folding, or less commonly holophrasting, is a feature of some graphical user interfaces that allows the user to selectively hide ("fold") or display ("unfold") parts of a document. This allows the user to manage large amounts of text ...
,
regular expression
A regular expression (shortened as regex or regexp; sometimes referred to as rational expression) is a sequence of characters that specifies a search pattern in text. Usually such patterns are used by string-searching algorithms for "find" or ...
s,
macros, manual
code page
In computing, a code page is a character encoding and as such it is a specific association of a set of printable characters and control characters with unique numbers. Typically each number represents the binary value in a single byte. (In some co ...
selection,
themes, sorting, case changes, external change detection, matching braces, visible line-endings, and visible line-wrap indication.
See also
*
MS-DOS Editor
__NOTOC__
MS-DOS Editor, commonly just called ''edit'' or ''edit.com'', is a TUI text editor that comes with MS-DOS 5.0 and later, as well as all "x86" SKUs of Windows, until Windows 11. It supersedes edlin, the standard editor in earlier versi ...
, Notepad's predecessor
*
XML Notepad
XML Notepad is an open-source XML editor written by Chris Lovett and published by Microsoft. The editor features incremental search in both tree and text views, drag/drop support, IntelliSense, find/replace with regular expressions and XPath exp ...
References
External links
*
Notepadin Windows XP Product Documentation at Microsoft.com
Notepad FAQin Windows Vista documentation at Microsoft.com -
{{DEFAULTSORT:Notepad
DOS text editors
Windows components
Windows text editors
1983 software
1985 software