I will always have a soft spot for Microsoft’s Notepad. It comes from my persistence with it to manually web site code for the web. In the mid 1990s I became totally obsessive/compulsive with web site design and especially updating HTML source code. At one stage I may have used Notepad more than I used my legs. It was around this time that I suffered a continual and uncontrollable right click whenver I surfed the web.
Sadly (or maybe fortunately), my web design days are behind me. I continued to use Notepad in the years since for note taking, task controls, and communication logs. That was until recently. Lately I’ve begun moving to more sophisticated and integrated tools like Microsoft’s OneNote, Evernote, and so on. I find these tools a lot better to manage these work tasks as they offer more comprehensive features (like global search) and the ability for numerous people to asynchronously read and update from other locations.
I often fall into my old habits and take initial meeting notes in Notepad before moving into proper document formats, but I think my usage of it for just about everything else has expired.
Before I forget how to do it, thought I’d record a tip I found quite helpful. Some times I found it useful in recording notes which were maintained along with a timestamp of the entry, as a chronological log. I found it invaluable to learn that Notepad can automatically add that timestamp for you. The way to do this is to type .LOG in the first line of the file, then add a line break and save the file. Then each time you open the file, Notepad will record a timestamp on a new line, where you can add your respective notes.