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Microsoft Tests Notepad Text Formatting In Windows 11 (betanews.com) 81

Posted by BeauHD from the bold-updates dept.
BrianFagioli shares a report from BetaNews: Microsoft just can't leave well enough alone. The company is now injecting formatting features into Notepad, a program that has long been appreciated for one thing -- its simplicity. You see, starting with version 11.2504.50.0, this update is rolling out to Windows Insiders in the Canary and Dev Channels, and it adds bold text, italics, hyperlinks, lists, and even headers. Sadly, this isn't a joke. Notepad is actually being turned into a watered-down word processor, complete with a formatting toolbar and Markdown support. Users can even toggle between styled content and raw Markdown syntax. And while Microsoft is giving you the option to disable formatting or strip it all out, it's clear the direction of the app is changing.
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Microsoft Tests Notepad Text Formatting In Windows 11 More

Microsoft Tests Notepad Text Formatting In Windows 11

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  • COPY CON (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RitchCraft ( 6454710 ) on Friday May 30, 2025 @06:13PM (#65417601)

    I wonder if COPY CON MSSUCKS.TXT still works at the command prompt?

  • Nope. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MobileTatsu-NJG ( 946591 ) on Friday May 30, 2025 @06:13PM (#65417609)

    You see, starting with version 11.2504.50.0, this update is rolling out to Windows Insiders in the Canary and Dev Channels, and it adds bold text, italics, hyperlinks, lists, and even headers.

    Umm... ALL Microsoft needed to do was fix the wonky word-wrap. Did they forget about WordPad?

    • You see, under a microscope, in the late 1960's... the "period" was actually a Communist hammer and sickle. Do you think Variable Fonts should escape now? Or allow glyphs to execute PostScript and ANSI combinations to disable Jhadi Hebdo? GATES... GATES... DEVELOPERS...

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Did they forget about WordPad?

      Nope, they actively killed it. [microsoft.com]

      But I agree, stop messing with Notepad.

      • Re:Nope. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by MobileTatsu-NJG ( 946591 ) on Friday May 30, 2025 @07:47PM (#65417823)

        Huh. According to that link they killed WordPad to sell Word.

        Question- wouldn't bringing WordPad back be a lot cheaper for MS than fucking up Notepad?

        • Re:Nope. (Score:4, Interesting)

          by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Saturday May 31, 2025 @03:58AM (#65418355)

          Huh. According to that link they killed WordPad to sell Word.

          Question- wouldn't bringing WordPad back be a lot cheaper for MS than fucking up Notepad?

          Here's the thing, you have telemetry disabled don't you. Microsoft has the data, Wordpad was virtually never used. Microsoft started tweaking Notepad long before there was an inkling of depreciating Wordpad. And I have to confess as well as soon as Notepad supported unix line endings I stopped using Wordpad for anything.

          They didn't really "kill Wordpad to sell word". The message just points out that you need to use another tool to read RTF files. They are virtually unused these days. I haven't seen one myself since the Windows XP days.

        • I'm guessing the features being added won't be up to par with what Wordpad had. It probably won't have page margins or layout features useful for printing.

          But they still want to attract people to Notepad - specifically, the kind of people who like talking to Copilot, which will probably want to spit bold text and hyperlinks at you.

          They have to add enough features to make it attractive to AIdiots, but not enough to create a nice printed document, which encroaches on Word's market.

      • Eventually they will kill Notepad for the same reasons they killed Wordpad, and then re-invent Notepad again for the same reasons people just want plain old Notepad.

  • Do Not Want! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SlashbotAgent ( 6477336 ) on Friday May 30, 2025 @06:19PM (#65417625)

    We already had Wordpad for a watered down word processor.

    I want a plain text notepad. I'm not even sure I want or need different character encodings. Just plain ASCII text is all I want or need. I want to be able to paste something into notepad and strip all formatting, hidden features, character substitutions...

    But, all is not lost. I recently read that Microsoft is releasing edit.exe, which looks like a reinvention of DOS edlin. So, I'll still have a pure text editor, but it will be less convenient.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Edit is a full page editor while edlin was a line editor.

    • I've kept a copy of vile on every Windows box I've been forced to use. Any installation hassle was worth the effort to keep my fingers from having to learn a new editor.

    • That's what Notepad++ is for

    • We already had Wordpad for a watered down word processor.

      Had. Past tense. Wordpad doesn't exist anymore.

      • No, it still exists, they simply chose to remove it from Win 11. That's what makes the "re-invention" of Wordpad all the more assinine.

        Quite frankly, this is the sort of banal stupidity that I expect to see from the OSS community. 'We're throwing everything out and starting over so that it will be more dog shit and lack feature parity.'

    • Ctrl A, Ctrl C. Ctrl V, Ctrl A,Ctrl C. CtrlV

      A great washing machine. I hope we don't lose it.
      • That's also a big use case for me. Sometimes you just want a block of text with none of the extra formatting applied.
      • FYI, it is limited in size compared to Notepad but you can use the Run dialog to do same for smaller bits of text. Hitting Window-R has become part of my muscle memory for that same action.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It still is a plain text editor, it just supports Markdown (which is plain text interpreted by the editor/viewer). It's not a huge deal, many 3rd party Notepad replacements like Notepad++ also support Markdown to some extent, and giving the user basic formatting tools sounds like decent way to make it accessible.

      It would be nice if we could get Markdown adopted for email, instead of HTML. I've given up on hoping that plain text email comes back, but Markdown at least isn't nearly as bad as HTML, and usually

    • the original notepad was JUST a default text box with a default window. basically an example of what you yourself could build with Visual Studio with drag and drop plus a few clicks. Initially 'updates' to notepad where just updates to the MFC that got inherited by all apps on the system that used default widgets.

      • And? Your point is?

        Are you trying to say that I should write my own text editor rather than Microsoft leaving well enough alone?

        • not instead of, but both. Microsoft should leave it alone as the most basic editor, and if you want something better you should use for example notepad++, word pad, etc. or roll your own.
    • WordPad supports text files (.txt), rich text files (.rtf), Word documents (.docx), and OpenDocument text files (.odt) but not markdown.

  • Insane (Score:2, Informative)

    by bjoast ( 1310293 )
    What an unconscionably moronic decision. Have they lost track of what a text editor is?

  • Luckily notepad++ exists (Score:4, Insightful)

    by luvirini ( 753157 ) on Friday May 30, 2025 @06:20PM (#65417633)

    So there is no need to use the normal notepad app. Every time I have accidentally opened the stock app, it has seemed worse than what I remembered.

    • Oddly enough I still use notepad.exe a lot even though I've got notepad++ installed.

      • Same here. Notepad++'s power works against it somewhat in this sense. I like it and use it a lot. But when I just want to quickly check a config file or write down a note, I don't want to open my full Notepad++ with a dozen tabs, side panel, and whatever else, and clutter up my workspace there with something unrelated.

        Notepad is a nice alternative for truly "ephemeral" editing.

    • Re:Luckily notepad++ exists (Score:4, Insightful)

      by karmawarrior ( 311177 ) on Saturday May 31, 2025 @01:44PM (#65419081) Journal

      I do hate these kinds of gotchas. In reality a sizable number of people who use Windows are using a corporate computer and have to go through many levels of bureaucracy to get the tools they want installed, and have to make a case to a boss who may or may not be technically inclined.

      There's also the "My computer is broken can you help me fix it" "Sure, oh, looks like this Ini file needs changing, let me edit it" scenario. Sure, you can probably use some of these alternatives from a USB stick but...

      The reality is Windows should come with a plain text editor so that plain text files can be edited. Third parties having alternatives is not an answer to that, it's a workaround that works in many cases, but not all.

  • Man, if that ain't the thesis of the last 30 years....

  • they'll rename it Wordpad.

    You know, the basic word processing program that used to come with Windows, but they killed it?

    I guess they're taking lessons from Google now.

  • Markdown render (Score:3)

    by sanf780 ( 4055211 ) on Friday May 30, 2025 @06:49PM (#65417687)
    As far as I can tell, it is rendering markdown if you ask it to do so. I do not think it is a big deal if it is something limited as that.

    • It's microsoft. There's already AI in notepad, and now formatting. The *sole* point of notepad was that it was fast and didn't do jack to the content.

      And, again, it's microsoft. I'm sure they'll find a way to have "their" markdown be yet slightly different from *every other flavors*, because that's just what they do.

    • it is a big deal (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Because Notepad is supposed to be idiot proof. It's not supposed to autosave, or interpret anything pasted into it. It's supposed to be a multiline edit control with a menu calling some Common Dialogs. Basically the simplest possible way to make a useful program for Windows, with all the limits that came along with such a simple design (e.g. 64k file size until Win32 made wParam 32-bits). Accordingly, if I'm using Notepad to hold some markdown, it's because it's being held in Notepad temporarily, or I want

  • notepad is already unusable because it saves over edits that were not supposed to be saved.

    They need to bring back wordpad and do all the hacking they want with wordpad. Notepad is supposed to be simple.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Microsoft keeps reinventing then uninventing, then reinventing again. Hold still, ya flea-bitten' varmint!

      Movie-Maker, WordPad, Paint, PhotoViewer, and others I forgot about.

  • Org Mode: Your life in plain text [orgmode.org]

    “A GNU Emacs major mode for keeping notes, authoring documents, computational notebooks, literate programming, maintaining to-do lists, planning projects, and more — in a fast and effective plain text system.”

  • Then why did they kill Wordpad? (Score:3, Informative)

    by supabeast! ( 84658 ) on Friday May 30, 2025 @07:41PM (#65417807)

    Microsoft spent years developing Wordpad, killed Wordpad, and is now adding Wordpad features to Notepad. The stupidity never stops in Windows world.

  • Wordpad? It's probably some Microsoft PHB that can't find wordpad and wanted to add those features to notepad

  • As if they don't just bring back wordpad, now they have to break notepad. Who the hell is in charge of that clown show? Can't wait for GIMP-3.2 to drop so more people can abandon the slow moving car wreck that is Windows.

  • The only thing I had wanted "fixed" in notepad is for selection and (shift) tab to change indent level rather than delete the selection.

    You would think there would at least be something they wouldn't bother to fuck up... I mean who used notepad anyway? There was always wordpad to do this shit to. Now I hear notepad is full of AI shit. Wouldn't surprise me if there are some nasty excuses baked in to justify uploading everything to Microsoft.

    • I mean who used notepad anyway?

      I do. The only time I ever need a text editor on my PC is to save product keys and to edit the occasional .ini or .cfg file for an old game. It also makes for a useful scratchpad for Klingon translations but that's because - unlike TextEdit.app - it's monospace by default.

      The only thing I had wanted "fixed" in notepad is for selection and (shift) tab to change indent level rather than delete the selection.

      It's supposed to be plaintext editor, not a coding tool; overwriting the selected text with a tab character is exactly what I'd expect it to do. Frankly I'm more annoyed that they even added fonts to it, much less a "Send Feedback" option

  • Without the whole house of cards they have built comming crashing down.

  • Any time I provision a new windows machine for myself, I install maybe a half dozen text editors as part of the process because they all have their strengths and weaknesses. Even though I have text editors that pamper me, I still use notepad more often than anything else. Certainly not for anything major, but it was never intended for that. It's right there in the name, and that's perhaps what they're getting at with this change. It's *notepad* not *simple text file editor*. I think I'm okay with them makin

  • I'm wondering how many people use Notepad. I've been using Notepad++ for a long while, and haven't touched Notepad.

    Personally I like the idea of markdown support. A lightweight word processor that saves results as raw text would be quite appealing over saving as RTF or DOCX or another such format.

  • TFS had me scared, but I read TFA and it's just Markdown and something you can disable/enable from the menu at will. (I actually don't mind other editors that do something similar -- it's kind of nice if you are using Markdown, IMHO, but again, it's nothing that can't be turned off here).

  • Microsoft lays off about 3% of its workforce a little over 2 weeks ago. Yet, presumably spent time designing, approving, and implement some dumb ass feature.

    I suspect letting go of 50% of upper management and 15% of middle management would have solved Microsoft's workforce problem, remove a similar cost in compensation packages, and improved every business unit's over all productivity.

  • They already have wordpad, Why reinvent it? Really do not make sense

  • I use notepad all the time for the purpose of removing all formatting and tags from text I'm copying.
    It is reliable and helps me avoid leaving any unintended extra information with the text.
    And no, I cannot install other editing software to strip the formatting as the computer I'm using I do not have admin privileges. I need this on my work computer.

  • If it saves files as txt files formatted as Markdown, and only this, then fine.

    If they allow for saving any other filetype than txt, them they broken the primary use of that editor

    Granted I think most power users who need a text editor use Notepad++ anyway, so it's likely a moot point.

  • Why? (Score:2)

    by allo ( 1728082 )

    Why did they kill Wordpad, just to add the features to notepad now?

  • What's Notepad? (Score:3)

    by marcle ( 1575627 ) on Saturday May 31, 2025 @10:29AM (#65418747)

    I switched to Notepad++ years ago and never looked back.

  • Because of AI Bukkake and Recall spyware, Windows is no longer my main OS. Unfortunately, I still need it for some software, so I am setting up dual-boots with encrypted home folders so that Windows will not be able to read my data. I trust Dropbox for only sharing cat pictures. An anti-trust class action suit is needed.
  • By the time they figure it out, they will be finished, like Oracle's influence on OpenOffice.
  • It will be nice to have a built-in markdown reader in windows. Then I can write text files in markdown and know anyone can open and read them properly with a fresh Windows install. This does seem a bit odd, but not as bad as the AI integration, and honestly I'd say it's only bad if it interferes with using Notepad when you're not interested in writing markdown (for example, increasing application start time or making it easy to accidentally add formatting).
  • It's 2025 and everything is about the experience so give me a jacked-up Vim in WSL with a custom Terminal shader any day...
  • Long live Notepad++ and textpad text editors.

  • So Windows 11 does have substantial improvements over Windows 10.

    I wish I'd known earlier, I wouldn't have switched to Mac

  • Notepad is what you use the strip formatting. Please, just stop.
  • The WordPad and SuperPad source code is still available.

    VCSamples/VC2010Samples/MFC/ole at master microsoft/VCSamples GitHub
    https://github.com/Microsoft/V... [github.com]

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