Technology, Computer, Internet, and Security Blog

Have you ever wonder if you can use notepad as a logging tools? By logging I mean you can put what ever notes/text and it will automatically set the date and time for you in each session. Believe it or not, our old, plain, and simple default windows notepad can do that.

While I found out this trick is not new but still worth sharing. I bet only 1% or even less people know about that. I have been using computer since Windows 3.1 and I only know this TODAY!

Enough talk crap, here is the step how to make your nearly useless windows notepad a bit useful.

1. Open a new blank copy of Windows Notepad. Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Notepad.
2. Type .LOG in the first line. Do exactly as that including CAPS.
3. Save what have you done in previous step, give it what ever name you want.
4. Now open back that file with Notepad and magically time & date automatically inserted into the last line you left.
5. Type something below that time & date and save & close it again.
6. Open back with Notepad and another latest date & time automatically inserted to the last line.

Cool huh? Here is original issue discussed in Microsoft Knowledge Base, How to Use Notepad to Create a Log File.

Example case study

Interesting fact :

You can save that text into whatever extension you want, not only limited to *.txt. You can also save it as .ini, .log, .msc, .dat, .avi or WITHOUT extension at ALL. What the most important is, to open that file only and only with Notepad. No other text processor can understand that .LOG, I have tried it.

Until then. CYA.