Hidden Features of Notepad

Notepad is a brain child of Bill Gates of Microsoft

 and is the cornerstone of Windows Architecture.

Developed by the Gate himself,

it took him fifteen years to write a new GUI...

From Uncyclopedia

Notepad is plain simple tool, which can be easily replaced by a wide range of free text utilities. But it has its own advantages:

* It is a commodity - it is installed by default in any computer and any Windows Operating System.
* It is portable, small, fast, and does not use much of computer resources.
* It is so simple, that sometimes it is the only tool you need to open small text files.

To my surprise, even Notepad has its hidden secrets. Today, we’ll discuss two of them.

Making Notes With Notepad

This is real cool for people who use notepad to write down any info on a day to day basis.
* Create a blank text file with .LOG (in caps) as the first line of the file, followed by a carriage return (Enter) and save this file.
* Double-click the file to open it and notice that Notepad appends the current date and time to the end of the file and places the cursor on the line after.
* Type your notes and then save and close the file.
Each time you open the file, Notepad repeats the process, appending the time and date to the end of the file and placing the cursor below it!

Creating Hidden Text Files

This is an interesting trick to hide the files with no third-party software in three easy steps.
* Launch Windows command prompt from Start Menu -> Run -> Type cmd and press Enter.
* Using DOS commands navigate to the desired folder.
* Now type in notepad VisibleFile.txt:HiddenFile.txt and hit Enter, you can change VisibleFile.txt and HiddenFile.txt to names of your choice (notice the sign “:” between both file-names). You will be prompted to Create a New file click Yes as shown below.

Note, that this little "trick" requires NTFS partition. It’s a feature in NTFS that was designed primarily for compatibility with other operating systems, such as Apple’s HFS.