Technology Software

Computer Notepad Tricks

By Technology Last updated Thursday, July/04/2024

Using Notepade tricks may provide a bit of entertainment.Emotional businessman image by Vladimir Melnik from Fotolia.com

Notepad is a program included with most versions of Windows operating systems. As a basic text editor, Notepad is designed to write simple documents. What many people don't know is that there are many tricks you can do with this useful little word processor.

The "Matrix" Effect

This trick will display a bunch of green numbers in a command prompt. First, open notepad and type "@echo off". Press "Enter," and on the next line type "color 02". Press "Enter" and type ":start". Hit "Enter" again and on the next line type "echo %random% %random% %random% %random% %random% %random% %random% %random% %random% %random%". Finally, hit enter one more time and type "goto start". Save the file and make sure it ends with ".bat".

Open a new Notepad file and type ".LOG" and save the file. Close and reopen the file and you will notice that the date and time are now directly under ".LOG". Write a quick sentence and save the file again before closing and reopening it. You'll see what you typed, but under it you'll see the new time and date (though it may be the same). Every time you open this file, Notepad will automatically enter the current time and date under the previously entered information.

This one can be quite annoying and works as a great practical joke to play on a friend. In a new Notepad, type "@ECHO off", hit "Enter" and type ":top". Hit "Enter" and type "START %SystemRoot%/system32/notepad.exe" before hitting "Enter" one more time and typing "GOTO top". Save the file as a .bat file (ie Notehack.bat) and close it. You can email this to friends you wish to play the practical joke on. Upon opening the .bat file, the user will be literally bombarded with a continuous stream of new Notepad windows. To stop the madness, close the .bat file.

This is, perhaps, the easiest trick of all. Simply open a new Notepad document and type "Start" and save the file as a .bat file. Close the file and reopen it from the location it was saved (specified in the saving window). Upon opening the file you should instead get a command prompt window. You can type "Start" on multiple lines to open multiple command prompts. For example, "Start" written once on three consecutive lines will open three command prompt windows.