A plain text editor is a very handy tool
I wonder why so few people use theirs? And one comes built into every copy of Windows. It’s called “Notepad” and you can find it with [Start > All Programs > Accessories > Notepad]. If I were you, I’d right-drag it from there onto my desktop and choose “Create Shortcut here” from the pop-up menu I got (sometimes that would be “Copy here”).
That’s because I use Notepad several times every day. In fact it’s on my Windows Quick Launch bar at the bottom of my screen.
What’s Notepad good for?
Well, making notes to yourself, for one thing. I often want to remember something I run into online, a web address, a quote, some item that fits a list I’m keeping (like my growing list of weird coincidental names: bank robber named mr. Lawless, dentist Dr. Payne, etc.). I also have lists of procedures to fix PC problems and many other lists of reference materials and advice from various experts. I even use Notepad for a perpetual shopping list. So, I have a whole folder just for Notepad notes.
Notepad instant backups:
 What if this post I’m composing right now suddenly disappeared (like from a power glitch or something)? Would I have to stat over? Nope – after I type a few paragraphs, I do keyboard Ctrl+A (select All), Ctrl+C (copy), open Notepad and Ctrl+V (paste) and I have an instant backup.
The chance of losing a post like that is pretty small, but if I’m filling out a big online form, such as a request for technical support, or a long post to a favorite forum, the chances of losing my entry are much greater. It’s because of having to re-type that sort of stuff so frequently that I started making these Notepad instant backups, so I know such lose is common.
Notepad filter:
As a wed site developer, I often need to copy and paste people’s Word documents and such into web pages. You might not realize it, but Word documents are filled with invisible formatting codes. They make a real mess in a web page. Same applies to many other uses of stuff from Word or Excel. But, if you first paste those contents into Notepad, then do another copy/paste from Notepad into you’re HTML editor (or whatever you’re using), all that Word code is filtered out – since Notepad is a plain text editor, it ignores all the invisible code. The down side is you do loose your text formatting, but in my case I have to redo that in my web pages in any case. Like me, you too might also find that simply inserting paragraph spacing to re-format the text, after taking it through Notepad, is much easier than dealing with all that invisible code.
Of course you could save your Word document as a plain text file from right inside Word, but most of the Word content I deal with is created by people who don’t know that or realize there is an issue.
Please feel free to comment below…
‘Til next time – happy computing!
-jim coe
Tags: accessory software, Notepad
