Do you feel that your usual plain text editor needs a little more “oomph” into it? Are you looking for features that the Windows default just doesn’t have? Then EditPad Lite may be the program for you. EditPad Lite is a free text editor on the Windows platform that may be small and compact (the installer file is only 3.1 MB, and the installed file can easily fit in your portable storage device of choice), but it’s powerful enough and delivers many new features, including opening tabs, find-and-replace, and color customization, to satisfy your basic word processing needs.
Features of EditPad Lite include:
- You can open as many files in EditPad at a time as you want.
- You change between the open files by clicking on their tabs. No hassle with heaps of overlapping windows.
- You will enjoy EditPad’s unlimited undo and redo. You can even undo changes after saving them, as long as you did not close the file.
- EditPad reads and writes UNIX (LF only) and Mac (CR only) text files (in addition to DOS/Windows CR+LF files, of course).
- With EditPad you can directly edit Unicode text files and text files encoded in a variety of legacy code pages. This means EditPad can edit any text file, whether it was saved on a Windows or Linux computer, an old DOS PC or an IBM mainframe.
- If you run EditPad again when there is already an instance running, the file(s) you wish to edit will be opened by the existing EditPad window. This means there will be at most one EditPad window open, which will save you from a lot of task switching.
- Block functions: save parts of your text to disk and insert a file in the current text.
- You can specify many print settings: font, margins, headers/footers, etc. and immediately see the effects in the print preview.
- You have the option to keep the EditPad window on top of all other windows.
- When you close an unsaved file, EditPad will either warn you, automatically save the file as you prefer.
- Reopen menu that lists the last 16 files opened.
- EditPad puts an icon in the system tray that remains visible, even if EditPad is closed. This way you have easy and fast access to EditPad, without the need to keep it running all the time.
- EditPad fully supports double byte character systems (DBCS) so you can edit texts written in Far East languages, such as Chinese, Japanese or Korean, as easily as those written in European languages.
- Many settings such as word wrap, line numbering and auto indent can be made for each file type individually. You could activate word wrap but not auto indent when editing a plain text file, and just the other way around when editing source code.
- Configure EditPad’s appearance to your own taste and eyesight.
- Uppercase, lowercase, invert case and initial caps conversion
- Easy and working installation and uninstallation, delivered with DeployMaster.
For me personally, two features of EditPad Lite stand out. I like the fact that the files open on separate tabs in the prgram itself, so I don’t have to scramble to the Task Bar to find the file I want to edit next. I also like the fact that EditPad Lite highlights the line that you’re currently working on, so you never have to squint at your computer screen trying to find the cursor.
EditPad Lite is an excellent solution for those who want a little more functionality than Windows’ default plain text editor provides, without taking up too much space on your computer. The fact that it’s easily portable is another plus, in my opinion.
Related Links:
EditPad Lite’s Website