10 Tricks with Windows Notepad

Notepad or Notepad is the simplest, most versatile, and powerful Windows program, which is used not only for writing notes but also for creating programming codes from scratch and executing commands. We have collected in this article some of the most curious tricks with the Notepad, some useful others instead that are fun tricks to play on colleagues or friends on their computer.
To use the various tricks just right click on an empty space on the desktop, go to New, and then to Text Document. You can then open the new empty text document with Notepad, paste the code and save it with a name, also changing the file extension.
If you don’t see or don’t know what the file extension is, I recommend reading the guide on how to see file extensions, change them, and rename them.
These Notepad tricks, in addition to being interesting for what they do, are also simple tests for those who want to learn script programming.

NOTE: for Windows 10 you can download Notepad as an app with new functions

1) Antivirus test
I had already talked about this trick in the article on how to test if the antivirus is working and protects the computer
The code to copy and paste on a notepad file is
X5O! P% @ AP [4 \ PZX54 (P ^) 7CC) 7} $ EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE! $ H + H *
The file must then be saved with the name test.exe .
Trying to run it, the antivirus should block it otherwise there is a problem.

2) Create a personal event diary
Copy the word .LOG to a new empty text document and save the file as log.txt
Now, every time you open this file, a line appears with the exact date and time and you can write whatever you want under it, like in a diary.

3) Display some messages continuously
This is a joke trick you can do with Notepad to display a message or a series of popups continuously. Copy the code below and paste it into a new text document with Notepad and save it as message.bat . In this code you can write whatever you want after the asterisks.
@ECHO off
: Begin
msg * Hi
msg * What are you doing?
msg * Go to Navigaweb.net!
msg * if you want to be good!
msg * or your PC
GOTO BEGIN explodes

4) Open the CD Player Continuously
This is one of the most popular and still popular office tricks to do to co-workers on their computers. To run it, just copy the code below and paste it in the notepad saving the file with the name cd.vbs (in the save as window, pay attention that the encoding is Unicode).
Set oWMP = CreateObject (“WMPlayer.OCX.7”)
Set colCDROMs = oWMP.cdromCollection
wscript.sleep 30000
do
colCDROMs.Item (i) .Eject
wscript.sleep 30000
loop
The CD will open and close by itself every 30 seconds.

5) Matrix effect
Copy and paste this code, save it in the matrix.bat file and then run it
@echo off
color 02
: start
echo% random
%% random%% random%% random%% random% random %% random%% random%% random% % random% goto start

6) Make the computer speak
With this trick you transform any text into audio spoken by the computer. The code must be copied, pasted and saved in a file with the name testo-audio.vbs
Dim msg, sapi
msg = InputBox (“Insert text to convert to audio”, “Navigaweb speaker”)
Set sapi = CreateObject (“sapi.spvoice” )
sapi.Speak msg

7) Twin Towers trick
This is a bit macabre, to be mentioned anyway as it is curious and not to forget. Try typing in the number of flight Q33N that crashed on one of the Twin Towers in the 2001 attack.
Then change the font from the format menu to size 72 and Wingdings font and see what it looks like.

8) Make a popup appear with Yes and No
Copy the code to a text file saved as popup.vbs
onclick = msgbox (“Did you go to Navigaweb.net today ?”,20,” Did you go to Navigaweb.net today? “).

9) Make a timer
The text must be saved in a file with the name timer.vbs
For i = 1 to 10
wscript.echo i
Next

10) Shut down the computer with a message
@echo off
msg * But aren’t you bored?
shutdown -c “Error! That’s enough, Goodbye!” -s
The file can be saved as shutdown-pc.bat and can be used to have a quick link to shutdown or to make a joke on a friend’s PC.

11) Game “And Yet it Hurt”
You can play on the Windows notepad by downloading the game And Yet it Hurt , a game with story and choices to make, really fun, too bad it’s only in English.

NOTE: Each of the .bat or .vbs files can be autorun on Windows to run every time the computer is started.
To stop the .vbs files that go in loop it is necessary to open the Task Manager by pressing the ALT + CTRL + DEL keys and terminate the ” Script Host ” process.
There are also several other tricks with codes to write with notepad, but some of them, if used improperly (such as the one to format the C drive), can create many problems and are best avoided.