Notepad++ Tutorial

Notepad++ Introduction and Usage

For my tutorial, I wanted to explain how to change a file’s format using a free software called Notepad++. Notepad++ is a free text and source code editor that can be used on Windows computers. It was initially released on November 24th, 2003 and has won the SourceForge Community Choice Award for Best Developer Tool twice since then. I will admit that I am not an expert at using Notepad++, but I often use it to change my files’ formats which is super helpful in my opinion. Notepad++ is useful for Digital Arts and Humanities work because in this class, we have often had files that were in formats that we didn’t want them to be in. Notepad++ can be used to fix this issue by just changing the file format!

Step-by-step walkthrough

1. Go to the Notepad++ website’s download page and click the download link for the most recent version, located at the top of the page.

2. Click on the actual download for Notepad++ and not any of the ads on the side to immediately start the download.

3. Click on the installer exe to begin installing once it is finished downloading.

4. Follow the instructions on the installer to finish installing Notepad++. You can use the default settings for the entire installation.

5. Run Notepad++ by typing “Notepad++” in the Windows search bar and clicking on the app when it pops up.

6. Navigate to File at the top left and click Open.

7. Open the file that you would like to change the format of.

8. Navigate back to File at the top left and click Save As.

9. Click on the dropdown next to Save as type and scroll through the file formats and select the format that you’d like to save the file as.

10. Hit Save and you’re done!

More Resources

Notepad++ User Manual

wikiHow How to Use Notepad++