Word pad defaults

[cowpoke]

I use Word pad and can't find a way to change some of the setting defaults.

Some I want to change;

- when I open a file it is set for RTF, I wnat to change to 'ALL'
- Font, I want to set the default to what I want.

I change these every time, but haven't found a place to SET them or make
them the default ...

Any Ideas ?

[malcore]

There is no way to actually change the default font in WordPad.

There is a neat little workaround. Open WordPad, select font and size you would like to be the default and type one letter. Click Save As and name it what you like. Then close WordPad. Find the file you just saved, create a shortcut for it, either on desktop or in quicklaunch, and use this shortcut to open WordPad instead of the usual WordPad.exe. Will Open with the desired font already selected.

As for the Open dialog, I doubt you can change that from within WordPad. There may be a registry tweak, but it's not really that difficult to just click the arrow by file types and select ALL.

Hope this helps.


Edit- to make it so that any new files you save will not save and overwrite as the original file name you gave to the shortcut, right click on the file you made a shortcut for, click properties and check the ReadOnly box. Then when you create a new document using this shortcut method, you will be prompted to give it a name when you save.

[Paul Komski]

The Microsoft Common Dialog control provides six different dialog boxes that one can use in a VB-type application. The Action property of the Common Dialog control determines which of the six (Open Disk File, Save As, Color, Font, Print, and Help) dialog boxes appears.

Programatically the control can be a dll or an ocx (activeX) file and programaticlly various defaults can be created to appear at run time.

This has been enquired about a few times before and the only way to customise how it appears is when the software developer is actually writing the application that users will eventually use. There is no way, AFAIK, for users to customize these controls themselves.

[cowpoke]

Oh ya another little bug hmmm feature that I noticed.

I open file xxx, then off to the side I edit file xxx, back to Wordpad I re open file xxx, but it doesn't have my new changes i.e., it didn't pull the new file in, almost like it said oops no need to since I already have it.
When doing this I get no errors or msgs indicating it didn't get the new file ???

[shanmuga]

May be it's time for you to try a couple of free text editors.

META PAD (http://www.liquidninja.com/metapad/)
This was my old favourite, the author has this to say,
metapad is a small, fast (and completely free) text editor for Windows 9x/NT/XP with similar features to Microsoft Notepad but with many extra (and rather useful) features. It was designed to completely replace Notepad since it includes all of Notepad's features and much, much more.
EDITPAD LITE (http://www.editpadpro.com/editpadlite.html)
This is my current favourite.It's amazing really. If you are used to tabbed browsing, you are going to love this.Yes, this is a tabbed text editor.Linux version is also available.
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.
EditPad does not impose a limit on the size of files you can open and edit with it.
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.
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.
It is an understatement to say that these are replacements for notepad/wordpad. IMO :)

[cowpoke]

Thanks I'll give them a try, I guess you said it all concerning your old/new favourite, any other comments concerning the two ?

[Paul Komski]

Thanks for the links shanmuga EditPad Lite is cool alright! :cool: