Common Problems

Long Filenames are causing problems for Notpad!

If you are using Notpad and when you try to open a file whose name has blank spaces in it (e.g. 'This is my file.txt' or C:\Program Files\readme.txt), Notpad reports: 'C:\Windows\d| contains an invalid path' or something similar.

To fix this problem make sure that Notpad is associated with the file associations you want using quoted filenames, This means that opening a text file should be associated as Notpad.exe "%1" not Notpad.exe %1. The change the file associations, use the menu option ‘View -> Options ->File Types’ in Windows Explorer.

This problem does not occur if you let Notpad perform the registrations for you using the menu item ‘Options -> File Associations’.

This problem has been completely fixed in v2.65 and you do not need to ensure that your filenames are quoted.

Why are some options always greyed out in Notpad?

Minimize to tray is only available on Windows NT 4, Windows 95 or later and not on NT 3.51 due to the new shell provided.

Flat toolbars are only available if you have the latest version of the common control DLL from Microsoft installed. This is provided with most MS products such as Internet Explorer 3 or 4 and Office 97. This update gets installed by the Vcredist.exe download which is referred to in the install topic

Bitmap menus are only available on Windows NT 4, Windows 95 or later and not NT 3.51 due to the new shell provided.

The preload DLLs option is only available on Windows NT 4, Windows 95 or later and not NT 3.51 due to the new shell provided.

All the file association options again are only available on Windows NT 4, Windows 95 or later and not NT 3.51 due to the new shell provided, so if you want to set up Notpad as the default text editor on NT 3.51 then you must use good old File Manager.

The Window caption options ‘Only show document title in caption’ and ‘Show document title prefixed’ are not available when in MDI mode due to a bug with the way MDI is implemented on Windows.

Why is the ‘Check for Updates’ function not working in Notpad?

This function relies on part of the Microsoft Internet Explorer SDK DLL’s. For this option to work correctly you must have the WININET DLL installed. This file is provided by having Internet Explorer 3 or later installed.

Why is the help file not loading?

As of v2.62 of Notpad, the help file is now in compiled HTML (.chm) format. To be able to view this you must have Internet Explorer 4.0 or later installed on your machine.

Why is the Spell Check selecting different text?

Internally Notpad can take advantage of rich edit 2 functionality but this is know to cause problems with the spell checking functionality in Notpad. To avoid this problem, make sure the 'Use Rich Edit 2 Functionality' option is not checked on the advanced tab of the 'Options' dialog.

Why is my command line call to Notpad failing?

If you are using one of the command line extensions such as /OEM then make sure it is not the last command line parameter, as this is always reserved for the filename. Also if any file you want to run has spaces in it, then make sure you put quotes around it.


Note

If you find any bugs, please contact the author. Please note that even though Notpad requires Internet Explorer 4 or later installed, this does not mean you must set this browser as you default. Notpad does not have any problems with a Netscape browser configured as the default web browser.