Free Alternatives of Microsoft Notepad for Windows

Microsoft Notepad:

Notepad is a simple text editor for Microsoft Windows and a basic text-editing program which enables computer users to create documents and comes with Windows OS by default. It is a common text-only editor. The resulting files typically saved with the .txt extension and have no format tags or styles. Wikipedia

If you are looking for alternatives to the Notepad, below is the list describing Notepad alternatives having a lot of functions.

1. Notepad++

Notepad++ is a free (as in "free speech" and also as in "free beer") source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Running in the MS Windows environment. Based on the powerful editing component Scintilla, Notepad++ is written in C++ and uses pure Win32 API and STL which ensures a higher execution speed and smaller program size. By optimizing as many routines as possible without losing user friendliness, Notepad++ is trying to reduce the world carbon dioxide emissions. When using less CPU power, the PC can throttle down and reduce power consumption, resulting in a greener environment.

Features

Syntax Highlighting and Syntax Folding
User Defined Syntax Highlighting and Folding: screenshot 1, screenshot 2, screenshot 3 and screenshot 4

PCRE (Perl Compatible Regular Expression) Search/Replace

GUI entirely customizable: minimalist, tab with close button, multi-line tab, vertical tab and vertical document list
Document Map
Auto-completion: Word completion, Function completion and  Function parameters hint
Multi-Document (Tab interface)
Multi-View
WYSIWYG (Printing)
Zoom in and zoom out
Multi-Language environment supported
Bookmark
Macro recording and playback
Launch with different arguments

2. EditPad Lite

It is good text editor if you are non coder and available free for personal use. EditPad Lite is a compact general purpose text editor. Use EditPad Lite to easily edit any kind of plain text file.

Features

Large file and long line support.

Full Unicode support, including complex scripts and right-to-left scripts.

Direct editing of text files using Windows, UNIX, and mac Mac text encodings (code pages) and line breaks.

Tabbed interface for working with many files.

Unlimited undo and redo for all open files, even after saving.

Automatic backup and working copies prevent data loss.

Powerful search-and-replace with literal search terms and regular expressions that can span multiple lines.

3. jEdit

It is a code editor program with suporting developing plugins. jEdit is Written in Java, so it runs on Mac OS X, OS/2, Unix, VMS and Windows.

Features:

Built-in macro language; extensible plugin architecture. Hundreds of macros and plugins available.

Plugins can be downloaded and installed from within jEdit using the "plugin manager" feature.

Auto indent, and syntax highlighting for more than 200 languages.

Supports a large number of character encodings including UTF8 and Unicode.

Folding for selectively hiding regions of text.

Word wrap.

Highly configurable and customizable.

4. PsPad

PSPad is a free text editor for developers for Microsoft Windows systems. It supports plain text as well as coding inside the software.

Features:

Work with plain text, the editor has a wealth of formatting functions, including a spell checker.

Create web pages, as a web authoring editor, PSPad contains many unique tools that save your time.

Want to use a good IDE for their compiler, PSPad catches and parses compiler output, integrates external help files, compares versions.

5. Notepad2

It is free plain text editor and looks similar to Microsoft Windows Notepad. Notepad2, a fast and light-weight Notepad-like text editor with syntax highlighting. This program can be run out of the box without installation, and does not touch your system's registry.