Make note of Notepad++
April 12, 2019
Make note of Notepad++
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Notepad++
My department used Notepad++, and it may be used in other departments as well. It's a very handy tool. It's great for examining text for "hidden" characters (carriage return, tab, etc) that might mess up input. It also has a wide library of plugins to enhance the user's experience with it, and it's updated pretty regularly.
- It's great for syntax highlighting.
- Great for diff/compare for multiple files.
- Excellent at find/replace across open files, files in a directory, or just one file.
- I've never had much luck getting the plugins for HTML/XML formatting to work consistently across installations, but that could easily be user error.
- Occasionally an update or plugin will require elevated user access, and if your user account doesn't have admin rights, you'll have to do without or (I think) reinstall it as a portable app.
- Not all plugins work equally as well as others. I think most (all?) are from contributors (open source) so what works in one version of Notepad++ may not work in the next version.
- It's open source and free, so it's a tool everyone can install without worrying about license costs.
- The user support online is great. If you've got an issue or want to do something, odds are high someone else had that same question.
Notepad++ is free, entirely, so you're not going to have to pay for more features (like with Sublime). It's also available offline, so if you're having internet issues you won't lose your data (like with Evernote).