If you use Windows Notepad daily, Microsoft has some good news for you. The Notepad has been the only choice for people to quickly jot down or write code on a Windows laptop since Microsoft discontinued Wordpad. As in the past, Notepad has always offered a basic text editor experience, allowing users to quickly jot down something. Microsoft has now come up with an updated version of the Notepad application and unlike in the past, the application has become easier to edit, thanks to new text formatting options.
Currently released to the testers via the developer’s build of Windows 11, Notepad now offers the ability to format text in a similar fashion to MS Word. Notepad users will be able to do basic text formatting like bold and italics. Sadly, underlining still remains a missing feature on Notepad.
You also get the ability to create simple lists and headings – features that dramatically improve the readability of the text document. There is also an option to hyperlink a selected word or sentence, something that Notepad has lacked all these years.
While the new formatting options will be enabled with the new update, Microsoft says that users can turn off these options from the Settings menu.
Is Notepad getting as good as MS Word?
With the addition of text formatting options, Notepad now becomes more useful and easier to work with. However, the app continues to lack basic functionalities that modern word processing apps offer. Notepad doesn’t offer the ability to underline, change font, include images in the body, utilise a spell check service, and more. For those seeking to write longer documents, a word processing software like MS Word and Google Docs are better options to work with.
Alternatively, you can also rely on the Google Keep notes app to quickly jot down thoughts and essentials with more modern formatting and editing features.