Summary
- Notepad now supports tables via toolbar or Markdown — yes, tables in Notepad; weird, but here we are.
- AI Write/Rewrite/Summarize shows results and previews faster — but only on Copilot+ devices using the on-board NPU.
- Notepad has morphed from a tiny text editor into a feature-packed beast — and I'm an irate granddad about it.
It's hard to talk about the 'good old days' of Windows without sounding like an irate granddad yelling at kids on their lawn, so I'm just going to lean into it. Back in my day, Notepad was a very lightweight text editor. You could write in it, save it, and if you were especially fancy, maybe add some formatting. Over time, Microsoft has been adding update after update to the classic app, to the point where it's basically an entirely different beast now.
Fast forward to today, and Microsoft has yet another round of updates to Notepad. And this one adds the ability to create tables. In Notepad. Honestly, kids these days.
4 reasons to replace Notepad with a more advanced text editor
Notepad has glaring omissions when put side by side other advanced text editors.
Microsoft's newest update adds tables to Notepad
Microsoft has just released two new features to people on the Dev or Canary branches for Windows 11. The first one is the addition of table creation in your notes:
We are expanding lightweight formatting in Notepad with support for tables! You can now easily insert tables in your document to help structure your notes. To get started, look for the new Table option in the formatting toolbar or by adding them using Markdown syntax directly. Once inserted, you can perform quick edits to add or remove rows and columns in the right-click context menu or from the Table menu in the toolbar.
The company didn't elaborate on how Notepad handles copy-pasting tables from outside sources, but I can imagine that it supports that, too. Honestly, seeing tables in Notepad is just plain weird to me, but that's just what Microsoft wants out of Notepad, I suppose.
If you've noticed a disturbing lack of AI features being stuffed into Notepad with this update, then your senses are sharper than you may think. The second update includes tweaks for the AI tools Write, Rewrite, and Summarize. Microsoft says the results will appear quicker, and you'll see a preview of what the AI is churning over faster. Again, this one is only available if you've purchased one of those shiny new Copilot+ devices, as it uses the on-board NPU to perform its job.
Fortunately, it seems I'm not the only one being a grouch about all these new features. One of our editors also argues that Notepad's strength is in its simplicity, which Microsoft is slowly taking away.