Notepad is a simple yet powerful application that the author always has open. They use it to keep notes for work and home by saving files to their desktop and deleting them when finished. Notepad has useful tools like automatically inserting the current time and date, word wrap for easier reading and writing of notes, and find and replace for long documents. It can also clean hidden formatting when copying from Word and pasting into other programs, and allows printing of notes as an alternative to Word for basic text documents.

1. Notepad
The unpretentious software

2.  Notepad is a program that is underestimated yet is a
very powerful application and is always open on my
computer. As the name suggests, I use it to keep notes
throughout the day, whether I am at work or at home.

3.  I usually save my Notepad files onto my desktop so I
can easily retrieve them. When I am finished with each
note, I simply delete the file from my desktop.

4.  There are a few useful tools within Notepad...

5. Time/Date
 Time/Date feature. Select Edit>Time/Date and it will
automatically insert the current time and date. It is
handy if you take a phone call and keep a diary note as
it will give you the exact time the note was taken. The
shortcut is F5 which makes it even easier to insert.

6. Wordwrap
 Another useful tool is the wordwrap feature. I always
have this turned on so I don't have to scroll to read my
notes. It makes it much easier to enter notes and read
them later. If there is a requirement to see how many
paragraphs you have or to quickly read the beginning of
each paragraph, then I turn the wordwrap feature off. I
can also make sure I haven't started every paragraph
with the same word and see how many paragraphs there
are easily with the wordwrap feature.

7.  The find and replace feature is very powerful and is
great if you have a long document. You can use 'replace
all' and it will update each instance within the document
or you can go through one at a time and replace only
those instances you require.

8. Copy/Paste
 Have you ever copied text from Microsoft Word and
pasted into a html editor or a blog like Wordpress? There
is a huge amount of hidden code in Microsoft Word and
this code is also copied when it is pasted into your html
editor. The solution is to copy into Notepad and then
paste into your html editor. This strips all the hidden
code and cleans up your text. It does also strip all the
formatting from Word but if you are using CSS then that
is a good thing. You don't want extra code slowing your
website down and it is much easier to debug any issues
if your text is clean.

9. Print
 You can also print your Notepad documents which comes
in handy especially if you don't have Microsoft Word. If
you only use Microsoft Word for writing text and don't
need any formatting tools, then you can easily replace it
with Notepad. If you wanted to add tables, create large
documents or format documents then Microsoft Word is
ideal but just to keep notes quickly and easily, then
Notepad is the answer.

10.  Hopefully this has given you an insight into the features
of a little application hidden within Accessories. Don't
underestimate the power of Notepad.