How to make Notepad++ take over from the standard notepad.exe

Question

I could do this easily with TextPad, then I got irritated with Textpad once I'd played with Notepad++.

Now that I've removed Textpad:

• I want Notepad++ to take over the right-click > Edit option in Explorer, and
• I want Notepad++ to come up when I type notepad in the command prompt.

I know that Notepad++ has a shell extension that allows one to do right-click > Edit in Notepad++. But my old right-click > Edit link remains, and I keep finding myself clicking on it, only to be rewarded with an error.

Answer 1

Notepad++ has an interface exactly for this. Go to

Settings > Preferences > File > Association

From there you can choose what extensions you would like to associate with Notepad++, sorted into categories (with the option of adding custom ones)

Answer 2

If you don't want to change the system files simply right click on a file and select "Open With > Choose Default Program".

Now just select Notepad++ and you're good to go.

The only drawback with this approach is that you need to do it for all file types you want to open with the new program (*.txt, *.log, *.xml or whatever), so if you have a lot of different text based files it's not the option for you.

Answer 3

Replace Windows Notepad with more advanced editors

Answer 4

Notepad++ has a shell extension that allows you to do Right Click > Edit in Notepad++

Answer 5

i'm going to post michel's comment as an answer, because it looks like it should work. And it looks better than all the others. And i'll add another way myself, with the path.

The OP asked about the cmd prompt too. link from howtogeek about replacing the executable

Another way is open a cmd prompt, type PATH=c:\dirwithbats;%PATH% or for permanence, edit the path variable in the dialog box. Put a bat file c:\dirwithbats\notepad.bat that launches your other editor.

Answer 6

I found this tool to automatically replace Notepad with Notepad++:

Tool by FloatOverflow