Notepad++

My uncle was an upholsterer by trade. With his experience and the proper tools, he could transform furniture from shabby to sheik. In many respects, building or supporting a ministry in the digital age is no different. You must first start with the best tools and gain experience around their optimal and varied usage so you know which tool to use and when, to use it to get the job done. One foundational tool which I make use of daily is Notepad++.

Application/audience

At its core, Notepad++ is a basic text editor, void of the multitude of formatting options in typical word processing software. It is popular with programmers because it has features which detect and highlight coding syntax, making it more obvious to debug. But it has many layers of usefulness for non-programmers as well. One thing that I find most helpful is the ability to have multiple tabs open at the same time. Coupled with auto-save, I can open Notepad++ any time and easily resume work on one or more of the tabs I have open.

A few ideas for use in church and school settings include …

• Use it as a “quiet” place to draft sermons or newsletter articles.
• Create templates of text used often, such as a response to inquiries about church or school, and copy it whenever needed.
• Copy and paste formatted content into Notepad++ and from Notepad++ into a web editor to avoid difficult text format issues.

Related resources

Microsoft Notepad comes baked into Windows. It can serve the same purposes but lacks the auto save and multi-tab functionality. For those in the Mac OS ecosystem, Notepad++ isn’t an option, but TextEdit is available in the Accessories folder.

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