Answer Line: Replace Your Default Text Editors in Windows

When I open a text document that is too long for Notepad, Windows brings it up in WordPad--a program I don't care for. Is there any way for me to change this default setting?

Lee Roberson, via the Internet

A lot of other free text editors exist, and just about all of them are better than Windows' own Notepad and WordPad. Most are able to handle files larger than 64KB, the size at which Notepad hands things over to WordPad.

My favorite free text editor is Fookes Software's NoteTab Light, a stripped-down version of a more powerful shareware program. NoteTab Light uses tabs to track open text files (see FIGURE 1).Two stellar features are its Word-like autocorrect and its FTP uploads and downloads.

To make NoteTab Light your default text editor, open the program and select Help, Replace MS Notepad. This replaces the file Notepad.exe with a program that launches NoteTab Light in all situations where, under the old regime, Notepad would have opened automatically.

Another good free editor is Sven Tore Iversen's TextIt. Though less powerful than NoteTab Light, TextIt has a handy search-and-replace function, and it can automatically detect URLs. Notepad users will feel right at home with the program.

TextIt associates itself with the .txt extension, but it doesn't replace Notepad.exe, and uninstalling TextIt doesn't restore the .txt file association to Notepad.

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