{"id":5027,"date":"2008-04-15T17:46:09","date_gmt":"2008-04-15T16:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/onsoftware.en.softonic.com\/replace-windows-notepad-with-more-advanced-editors\/"},"modified":"2025-07-02T02:32:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T09:32:14","slug":"replace-windows-notepad-with-more-advanced-editors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/replace-windows-notepad-with-more-advanced-editors\/","title":{"rendered":"Replace Windows Notepad with more advanced editors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/articles-images.sftcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2008\/04\/notepad.jpg\" alt=\"Replace Windows Notepad with more advanced editors\" align=\"right\" \/>The Windows standard Notepad is certainly not the best text editor around. It doesn&#8217;t play well with large files, open files from other platforms properly, let you customize background and text color&#8230; not to mention the absence of an advanced search and replace tool or the inability to work with several documents open at the same time.<\/p>\n<p>For these reasons many people simply abandon it and start using other editors, which usually include all those advanced tools and features that Notepad lacks. Here are some of them:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/notepad-plus.sourceforge.net\/uk\/site.htm\">Notepad++<\/a> &#8211; powerful editor with support for zoom, bookmarks and drag-and-drop<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flos-freeware.ch\/notepad2.html\">Notepad2<\/a> &#8211; advanced text editor with syntax highlighting for coding languages<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/jsimlo.sk\/notepad\/\">TED Notepad<\/a> &#8211; light-weight editor with very powerful tools<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.editpadpro.com\/editpadlite.html\">EditPad<\/a> &#8211; an editor with no size limits and an auto-save feature<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nebulasoft.cn\/minipad2\/minipad2_en.html\">MiniPad2<\/a> &#8211; great editor with tabbed interface and advanced clipboard functionality<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>You can use any of those instead of Notepad. But if you prefer a more radical change, you may replace the standard Windows tool completely with your new favorite editor and forget about Notepad forever. Want to know how? Just following these simple steps:<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><strong>1.<\/strong> First, make a backup copy of the original Notepad executable file. It should be located in the <em>C:\\Windows folder<\/em>. Copy it to another location or a removable drive. It&#8217;s important that you copy it and not move it, as we&#8217;ll need to rewrite it later on.<\/p>\n<p><strong>2.<\/strong> Now make a copy of your favorite editor&#8217;s original executable file (say it&#8217;s editpad.exe) and rename it to notepad.exe.<\/p>\n<p><strong>3.<\/strong> For this step you need to make system files and folders visible. Go to <em>Tools &gt; Folder Options<\/em> on any Windows Explorer window and in the options menu that appears, enable &#8220;Show hidden files and folders&#8221;  and disable &#8220;Hide protected operating system files&#8221;.  Once you&#8217;ve done that, copy your renamed editor file, browse to the <em>C:\\Windows\\System32\\dllcache<\/em> folder and paste it there.<\/p>\n<p><strong>4.<\/strong> Copy this same file again and go back to the <em>C:\\Windows<\/em> folder. Paste the file there as well. Windows will ask for confirmation every single time, simply click on OK. Also, when you get a message asking you to insert your Windows CD (so that the system can replace the original Notepad), just click on Cancel. Windows may insist a bit but it&#8217;ll eventually stop complaining.<\/p>\n<p><strong>5.<\/strong> Congratulations! You&#8217;ve got a brand new text editor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Windows standard Notepad is certainly not the best text editor around. It doesn&#8217;t play well with large files, open files from other platforms properly, let you customize background and text color&#8230; not to mention the absence of an advanced search and replace tool or the inability to work with several documents open at the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/replace-windows-notepad-with-more-advanced-editors\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Replace Windows Notepad with more advanced editors&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2011,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[],"tags":[],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-5027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2011"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5027"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":336198,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5027\/revisions\/336198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5027"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=5027"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=5027"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=5027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}