Top 10 Coolest Notepad Tricks and Hacks for Your PC

Thursday, November 5, 2015

The humble Notepad of your laptop goes unappreciated many times. This little tool is capable of doing some amazing tricks with just few simple steps. In this article, I’m going to tell you my 10 favorite Notepad tricks.

What work do you perform with Notepad? Nothing much? Well, Notepad is a lot more than a simple text editor. Few lines of commands create interesting tricks that will definitely surprise you. In this article, I’ve compiled my 10 personal favorite tricks and shared it with you.

Check these tricks out and if you have some more, don’t hesitate to share with us.

Top 10 Coolest Notepad Tricks and Hacks for Your PC

1. Make Notepad your Personal Diary

Do you want a diary in your computer? Notepad can be turned into a personal logbook by simple steps. Everything you type will be saved with the particular date and time.

Follow these steps to make notepad your diary:

1. Open Notepad

2. In the first line, type “.LOG”

3. Save the file as “log.txt”

2. Password-protected Folder using Notepad

You can protect the files and folders in your computer by using this Notepad trick. A password-protected folder is created using few lines of code and you can keep your important stuff safe.

Type the following code. Instead of “fossBytes” written in the code, type in the password of your wish. Save the file as private.bat and choose File type as All Files (*.*). Double click on the file private.bat. A Private folder will be created in which you can move the files and folders that you want to protect. Now, a password will be required to open this folder.

@ECHO OFF
title Folder Private
if EXIST “Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}” goto UNLOCK
if NOT EXIST Private goto MDLOCKER
:CONFIRM
echo Are you sure you want to lock the folder(Y/N)
set/p “cho=>”
if %cho%==Y goto LOCK
if %cho%==y goto LOCK
if %cho%==n goto END
if %cho%==N goto END
echo Invalid choice.
goto CONFIRM
:LOCK
ren Private “Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}”
attrib +h +s “Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}”
echo Folder locked
goto End
:UNLOCK
echo Enter password to unlock folder
set/p “pass=>”
if NOT %pass%==fossBytes goto FAIL
attrib -h -s “Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}”
ren “Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}” Private
echo Folder Unlocked successfully
goto End
:FAIL
echo Invalid password
goto end
:MDLOCKER
md Private
echo Private created successfully
goto End
:End

3. The Matrix Effect

‘Matrix’ movie fan? Create your own window of random strings of green digits displayed all over.

Type the following code, save the file as .bat, open the saved file and see the Matrix magic! (You can find the saved file by performing a simple search in start menu).

@echo off
color 02
:start
echo %random% %random% %random% %random% %random% %random% %random% %random% %random% %random%
goto start

4. Shutdown your Computer with a Message

Don’t you find the process of shutting down too tedious? Open Start menu, Click on Turn Off button, Click Ok! Why not just double click an icon! Follow the steps and you can shut down your system by just double clicking on an icon. Also, a message of your choice will be displayed.

Open Notepad, type the following code and save the file with any name but with extension .bat

@echo off
msg * Computer will now shut down
shutdown -c “Sweet Dreams. Take care.” –s

5. Pop out the CD Drive continuously

Play a prank with your friends and make their computer’s CD drive open and close repeatedly.

Open Notepad, type the following code and save the file with extension .vbs Then open the file. It will make CD drive pop out continuously. To stop the process, open Windows Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Delete) and end wscript.vbsprocess.

Set oWMP = CreateObject(“WMPlayer.OCX.7?)
Set colCDROMs = oWMP.cdromCollection
do
if colCDROMs.Count >= 1 then
For i = 0 to colCDROMs.Count – 1
colCDROMs.Item(i).Eject
Next
For i = 0 to colCDROMs.Count – 1
colCDROMs.Item(i).Eject
Next
End If
wscript.sleep 5000
loop

6. Text to Speech using Notepad

What if your computer speaks what you type! Follow these steps and Notepad will speak to you:

1. Open Notepad and type the following command.

Dim message, sapi
message=InputBox(“What should I speak?”,”Speak to me”)
Set sapi=CreateObject(“sapi.spvoice”)
sapi.Speak message

2. Save the file as speak.vbs

3. Open the file, type the sentence you want Notepad to speak and click OK.

7. Shortcuts for Changing Header and Footer in Notepad

Open Page Setup from File menu and use the following codes in the header and footer fields for the particular purpose:

&d Print the current date
&t Print the current time
&f Print the name of the document
&p Print the page number

&l Left-align the characters that follow
&c Center the characters that follow
&r Right-align the characters that follow

8. “Bush hid the facts” Trick

This trick is one of most popular tricks of Notepad. Follow these steps to use the trick:

1. Open Notepad.

2. Type “bush hid the facts” or “this app can break”.

3. Save the file and close it.

4. Open the file again.

What happens is when you open the saved file again, you see some different characters instead of what you had typed and saved (i.e. bush hid the facts or this app can break). This happens due to 4-3-3-5 string length bug in old versions of Windows.