Notepad ??

What is Notepad? I see all kinds of references to it in the forum.

What dose it do and what do you use it for??

I am runinng a Dell 8350, with Win XP Pro & 1000 ram.

Would and one be kind enough to explain it to me of refer me to a good article on it,

Thank you
Paul

 

It's a very basic text program. Click on start, help, index tab. Type notepad, you'll see some explanation.

 

Notepad is a simple ASCII text editor, no bells, no whistles, no special shortcuts to remember, just plain text. Notepad opens and saves small text files in ASCII format only, so you can use it to create or edit text files that don't require any special formatting such as special fonts, font sizes, colors, or other more complex editing tools. Text files have to be smaller than 64KB.

Since Notepad is only capable of saving files as plain text, it is a particularly useful tool for editing your computer's configuration files, such as Config.sys and Autoexec.bat. These special system files generally use a format that requires you to save them in a "text only" format in order for your computer to use them.

It's opens quick and closes quick, no muss no fuss. It is always handy for a quick peek into those files that your curious about but are unsure of what is in them or which application opens them.

Added bonus, most, if not all users, have one as it is a part of windows installation. This makes it a no to low risk instruction ie; "open in Notepad ", as opposed to open it in XYZ because many may not have XYZ.

I could ramble on but I'm beginning to annoy even myself....

 

giddezi,
Thank you for the information.
Paul

 

One of Notepad's most useful features is its ability to open any type of file. Many small files with file endings other than .txt are actually text files. Notepad can open and read these.

And, it can open .exe files, html files, etc. The only limitation is on the size of the file. Trying to open a large exe file, for example, will take a long time and possibly lock up your machine. In the case of the larger files, use Wordpad.

Almost all files contain some text. Opening them in Notepad can sometimes be informative just for the text that is readable between the code lines.

And some people who believe in the basics use Notepad as an html editor. Web page code can be written with Notepad and saved as an htm file.

Visual Basic scripts can be written with Notepad and saved as .vbs files.

Reg files, vbs files, and many, many more are text files that can be opened and checked for content before being run.

Notepad files can be saved with any chosen file ending.

A very versatile program that many people fail to appreciate .

 

Thabk you , Abraxas,

Paul