Windows 11 Notepad Finally Gets Spellcheck and Autocorrect (bleepingcomputer.com) 100
Microsoft today announced a preview release of Windows Notepad, with built-in spellchecking and an autocorrect feature. BleepingComputer reports: Microsoft says they are rolling out this preview to Insiders in the Windows 11 Canary and Dev channels, but it may take some time before it's available for everyone. "With this update, Notepad will now highlight misspelled words and provide suggestions so that you can easily identify and correct mistakes," reads Microsoft's announcement. "We are also introducing autocorrect which seamlessly fixes common typing mistakes as you type."
Once installed, Notepad will now show a red squiggly line under misspelled words that, when clicked, shows suggestions on the correct spelling. It's also possible to ignore words in a single text document or add them to the global dictionary so they are not shown in the future.
Microsoft says that this feature will be turned off for log and source code files. This is because it's common for non-standard words to be used in these files, triggering multiple spellcheck errors. Users can control this setting globally or for specific file types in the Notepad app's settings. The autocorrect feature is a bit more seamless, automatically making small changes to grammar and punctuation as you type.
Once installed, Notepad will now show a red squiggly line under misspelled words that, when clicked, shows suggestions on the correct spelling. It's also possible to ignore words in a single text document or add them to the global dictionary so they are not shown in the future.
Microsoft says that this feature will be turned off for log and source code files. This is because it's common for non-standard words to be used in these files, triggering multiple spellcheck errors. Users can control this setting globally or for specific file types in the Notepad app's settings. The autocorrect feature is a bit more seamless, automatically making small changes to grammar and punctuation as you type.
Notepad ++ (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Notepad ++ (Score:5, Informative)
The good thing with the classic Notepad has been that it didn't mess with the text and definitely removed all text formatting.
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Re: Notepad ++ (Score:5, Insightful)
All these "improvements" are turning it into wordpad, which they recently got rid of.
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All these "improvements" are turning it into wordpad, which they recently got rid of.
Thank you. Beat me to it by two hours. That is exactly what this is turning into.
Hans Kristian Graebener = Stonetoss
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Yep. This one sounds like it's now useless for editing code.
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I'd use Vim [vim.org] for editing code instead if I'm outside an IDE.
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Both features of notepad++, unless you tell it to do something of course.
The benefit of notepad is that it is a text editor that comes out of the box. Notepad++ is better across the board honestly they shouldn't mess with it, so they should license it and include it with windows as the new notepad.
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The drawback with Notepad for me is the lack of work wrap and inability to understand files with more sensible line endings. I used to just use Wordpad instead for those reasons, without any formatting. Now it's Notepad++, but that's way more complex than what I want.
Spell check and autocorrect have no place in a simple note taking application. This is the start of the bloat that ruined Word. Now I can't even type a quick email in Outlook wtihout it whining that something is wrong (put a double underlin
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Notepad supports word-wrap, it's just not the default.
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That's great, but I don't have permission to install it on my system.
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Then petition your employer to include it in the standard set of tools (i.e. have them install it for you). We did that, and it's now part of the very select set of tools that we lowly Windows beings, though a tool, can install ourselves.
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No argument there, but it's nice for the built-in tools to be reasonably usable and viable, no? Regardless of your platform of choice.
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I need to learn how to do that. It has auto complete feature that I wish would stop, I just want to press Enter without it changing my text.. But it's too confusing to configure.
90s-tacular (Score:3)
Did Clippy just stumble over Notepad and add some sweet 90s features?
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NSA (Score:2)
AI-Clippy will report your behaviour to the NSA.
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Or worse, MS.
The mission is creeping steadily (Score:5, Funny)
How long before they add AI-generated tooltips to Notepad that show sponsored links to products and services related to what you typed?
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This IS the Hellscape of our future.
It's like you're a Simpson's episode.
Re:The mission is creeping steadily (Score:5, Insightful)
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And spellcheck is the first thing many people turn off. Spellcheck very often does not work well, especially spellcheck from an incompetent Microsoft. I know it's all over the place, but the only benefit is the humor it provides when you get absurdist phone texts because it decided to auto-correct. Microsoft even wants to spell check proper names that are capitalized - how could it possibly know the correct spelling for someone's surname?
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The irony is they've just removed Wordpad where these features would have been appropriate
Why have two tools for the same job in the OS? I'm sure if they removed notepad instead someone else would be complaining. It was always perplexing that both were included in windows.
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It was always perplexing that both were included in windows.
I regularly used both tools in the past, though I don't use Wordpad these days as when I use Windows, I use Office including Word.
Wordpad is a "good enough" word processor to do everyday tasks. Including it in the OS was a big fuck you to everyone who sold word processors. Wordpad doesn't compete with Office as a [w]hole, so I doubt it was affecting sales much, although Microsoft does sell a Word license alone for $159 (!) so I presume that's why Wordpad has to die.
Meanwhile notepad was good for being just
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One is a rich text editor and one is not.
There is a good reason to have a plain text editor in the system and people use it for that purpose.
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WordPad is a word processor. Equivalents in Linux would be something like Calligra Words or AbiWord. I consider LibreOffice Writer to be equivalent to Microsoft Word.
Notepad is a text editor, the equivalent in Linux would is vi or nano (not emacs because it isn't usually part of the default install).
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WordPad is so much less than a word processor though, it only has light text formatting in RTF formats. To be fair though, Word is also so much less than a word processor :-)
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The older Notepad was abysmally bad. Terrible. No word wrap, will screw up if the file doesn't have Microsoft style line endings. Unable to even read a basic README file. It stayed this way forever because it was not maintained. The current version is better because it had a big rewrite eventually, copying features (and most likely code) from Wordpad. I think they ditched Wordpad because they had too many users who didn't even know Wordpad existed.
But why have two? That's like asking why have vi when
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Anyhow, I use Kate.
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How long before they add AI-generated tooltips to Notepad that show sponsored links to products and services related to what you typed?
Your comment was modded 'Funny', but if I'd had mod points I'd have gone with 'Insightful'. Seriously.
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No kidding.
The fact that Notepad has always been a no-frills-just-a-text-editor is its selling point.
They killed WordPad and are now just re-creating it with Notepad.... it makes no sense.
Spellchecking? (Score:1)
Re: Spellchecking? (Score:1)
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Finally, a text editor for the Wizarding World. Harry Potter will be elated.
Spillchek (Score:2)
They spell "Spellcheck" wrong in the requiement document, and not they implemented a "Spillcheck"
Bloaty 'Mc Bloat-face (Score:3)
Bloatware creep never ceases.
Here's the one thing that is unabashedly basic and straightforward... for *decades*. NOPE, not allowed.
Ok, Ok... probably fine ;) But I'm an old man Genx-er and want to rant.
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It's worse than that. They got rid of wordpad. Now... they're getting rid of notepad and adding back wordpad. It's just that notepad is being remade into wordpad.
Makes me wonder just what did the corporate meetings that led to this idiotic outcome looked like.
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Here's the one thing that is unabashedly basic and straightforward... for *decades*. NOPE, not allowed.
Funny, because when I look through all the other Slashdot comments I find a never ending string of people saying a better tool than notepad is ... one that is more complex.
It's not a case of "not allowed". It's a case of not fitting user requirements. Use the console's EDIT command if you wanted something as basic as possible. But you don't, because you want a GUI right? Well to that I say OMG BLOATWARE!
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What console EDIT command? I just fired up a command prompt, and there's no "EDIT" available.
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To be fair, this probably doesn't bloat Notepad much. Spell checking and auto-correct are part of the Windows OS now, it's just a question of apps enabling support for them. It's probably just a flag they set somewhere, and maybe some code to render red underlines.
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Use :
- Libreoffice
- Notepad ++
- Linux Ubuntu
meh (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly (Score:2)
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PureText! Didn't read this until I posted, otherwise I would have replied.
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Yes, exactly. It's also faster, presumably because it's so simple.
TextBox (Score:2)
Notepad was traditionally a simple application designed to expose the standard Windows Text Box as an application.
The last time the standard Windows TextBox got new features was with Windows NT, where they added options to add Unicode Left-To-Right control characters to the context menu. Then kind of upgraded again with Windows 10 when Emoji support was added in there, with WindowsKey+Period to add emojis anywhere you could type text. They didn't render very well in a standard windows textbox though.
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This limit was why I usually would use Wordpad.
Just going to throw this wacky suggestion out (Score:2)
What about adding word wrap and dropping wordpad?
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It has word wrap. Wordpad is supposedly going away in 12, I read somewhere.
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WHAT?!! *clutches pearls* You mean to say wordpad has NEVER had a purpose?
Finally! (Score:2)
No thank you (Score:1)
Auot core ekt (Score:2)
"We are also introducing autocorrect which seamlessly fixes common typing mistakes as you type."
E are also intros autocorrect whin dreamlike fixated common Ripon mistakes as you type.
Being dumb was its best feature (Score:5, Insightful)
Notepad was one of the last bastions of dumb software, something that did its one job well enough without being complicated.
I'd use it as a canary to see if windows rebooted itself. But then they changed it so that would restore its state when that happened.
It could be trusted to keep your secrets safe from a spell checker, to let you type verbatim without distraction, reminiscent of a typewriter.
RIP classic notepad
Re: Being dumb was its best feature (Score:2)
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I'd use it as a canary to see if windows rebooted itself.
Are you daft? Windows has an event log. When someone complains about using a tool completely inappropriately for the job it's no wonder their user requirements aren't even remotely considered as part of development.
Re: Being dumb was its best feature (Score:2)
Ugh no thanks (Score:2)
Unix eol (Score:2)
But can it display text files with Unix line endings. I hate when a text file I receive looks like one long line.
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Yes, we talked about notepad a couple times recently and I brought that up the first of them, and Notepad can now handle text files with Unix line endings and has been able to since at least Windows 10 (in which Notepad is otherwise pretty much untampered with — I use it daily.)
Re: Unix eol (Score:2)
That's great. If you liked that you might also like The Diamond Age, which is similar (but also different) and directly related.
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Yes, more recent versions can. The status bar shows "Windows (CRLF)" or "Unix (LF)" as appropriate.
I'm not sure if there is a "Mac (CR)" as Macs now use the Unix format.
useless (Score:2)
"Finally", as in those were much expected features... do many people use Notepad as a text editor so they need this? I do use Pluma on Linux and Notepad++ on Windows but never for text but as code editors/viewers and targets to paste from clipboard, in such cases such features are useless. Spellcheck in code comments? That might be slightly useful, but the red underlines in code will be annoying and distracting. Autocorrect in code? Hell, no!
Solving non-existent problems (Score:1)
...for no good reason.
Notepad was greate for scrubbing text, basic inspection of files with no risk of executing malicious code. Turning it into yet another attack vecotr is awesome. Thanks. We were definetly all clamoring for this.
Everyone punting Notepad++ as a replacement is drunk or insane. NP++ is a fantastic infection vector for clueless idiots. Please do continue extending trust to unknown packages you grabbed randomly from a service you have literally zero insight into.
You know where those features make sense? (Score:2)
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For work reasons, I had to put Win 10 on one of my machines, though I swore I'd never do it. I was able to delay until measures to minimize what they euphemistically call "telemetry" were easily available. Still, I don't like it. Fortunately, I'm now in a position to simply tell an employer to go pound sand if they try to push me into Windows 11.
So finally, Linux, here I come. I've been lazy and excessively attached to programs I'm familiar with from years of use. I should have made the jump already. T
notepad2 (Score:1)
Just use notepad2. Small, not bloated like notepad++, better notepad with syntax highlighting.
https://www.flos-freeware.ch/n... [flos-freeware.ch]
Mistakes were nade (Score:2)
When the built-in Skype got this, it could not be turned off for a while.
Pluma (Score:2)
I don't use MS-Windows, so not familiar with "Notepad", but it sounds like they are very slowly and eventually doing what Pluma/Xed (previously Gedit, but Gedit was ruined by Gnome/GTK3) has done for many years.
https://github.com/mate-deskto... [github.com]
https://github.com/linuxmint/x... [github.com]
CR? (Score:2)
And yet it still can't handle non-windows carriage returns I bet.
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It can open files with Unix line endings, and it will save any changes to that file in Unix format.
You can't however create a new file and save it in Unix format.
Too much innovation (Score:2)
Too much innovation for me, lads.
Slow down, pretty soon there won't be any new features for future software devs to invent.
Have a way to view special characters (Score:2)
Spell check and autocorrect are not needed for a simple text file editor
I would like a way to view characters like a TAB or CR LF
Who asked for this? (Score:3)
Hopefully these stupid modifications are built into the frontend so that I can at least use Metapad LE [liquidninja.com] as a suitable replacement.
DYAC (Score:3, Funny)
Damn You Auto Cucumber!
(Written from WIndoze-11 Notepad)
PureText - My Notepad Substitute (Score:2)
My most common use for Notepad was as a formatting stripper. Copy-paste-copy-paste. Now I use "PureText" - which does the same job directly in the clipboard.
Highly recommended. Available in the store. Free.
Progress (Score:3)
In the 1970s, the US Army launched a program to replace the Jeep with a new more capable vehicle. The Jeep was meant to be a very reliable, easy to maintain, simple, all-terrain transport for moving people and material around, but not in active battle.
The replacement, the HMMV, was far more capable, but also much more complicated and expensive. They began using it as a forward troop carrier, which it wasn't designed to do, leading for a need to outfit them with heavy uparmor kits, protected machine gun mounts, and upgraded engines to handle all the additional weight, which also made them poorer at hauling stuff.
The replacement for the HMMV is going to be an armored personnel carrier. It's heavy, complex, and not very good at hauling around much of anything beyond a few troops.
The problem is, now the army needs a reliable, easy to maintain, simple, all-terrain transport for moving people and material around, but not in active battle.
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Still broken (Score:1)
Too much (Score:2)
Instead... (Score:2)
I don't think anyone wants this...not even in MS (Score:2)