Industry guru Dave Taylor offers free tech support on a wide variety of technical and business topics, including HTML, Apple iPhone, online advertising, Cascading Style Sheets, Web design, management, Unix, Linux, search engine optimization, online dating, Mac OS X, shell script programming and Microsoft Windows.

How do I edit HTML files using Windows NotePad?

Dave, I am reading your book Creating Cool Web Sites and you say on page 22 "suppose you recently created the file not-yet.html in NotePad..." and go on to show how it would look on Internet Explorer with and without HTML tags. But I cannot duplicate this example!

NotePad does not let me save as .html, nor does WordPad and if I save it as Web Page in Microsoft Word 2003 it won't work either. I am super motivated to get going but have just about ripped all my hair out as I can't get past the first step.

Dave's Answer:

Sorry to hear about your confusion and frustration! Hold off on any further hair ripping, however. It sounds painful.

Though it's not completely obvious, NotePad has the ability to save a file in "Text Document" mode, and that's what you want. In fact, when you're in NotePad and choose Save As, there are three snippets of information you need to supply: File Name, Save as type, and Encoding.

The choice for Save as type is "Text Documents (*.txt)", the Encoding should be ANSI, and the filename must have the .html suffix for the Web browser to then interpret what you've typed as an HTML page, rather than a text page. And that's where NotePad is a bit tricky: if you just type in a filename, it'll automatically give it the ".txt" filename suffix, which won't work how you want. You can add all the HTML you desire, but IE (and any other Web browser) will still show you the HTML, not interpret it.

To sidestep this problem, make double sure that when you enter a filename, that you don't leave a .txt stray filename suffix in the box, but instead make sure that it's a ".html" file, like this lower corner slice of the Save As dialog box:

I think that'll get you going. If not, let me know!

Help others find this article at Del.icio.us, Digg, Netscape, Reddit, and Stumble Upon

Categorized: Windows Help (Article 3867)
Tagged:
Previous: When was the floppy disk invented?
Next: Why do the fonts in Firefox Linux look so terrible?

Subscribe!

Never miss another useful Q&A article again! Subscribe to AskDaveTaylor with Google Reader.

Comments

I guess the filename not-yet.html has to be put in quotes else it willh have a .txt extension.

Amit
http://labnol.blogspot.com

Posted by: amit agarwal at January 26, 2005 7:34 AM

I don't think that's true, Amit. In fact, knowing Windows, I'd be afraid that I'd end up with a filename that included the quotes! :-)

Posted by: Dave Taylor at January 26, 2005 2:37 PM

It's probably more involved than the original poster may want, but I prefer to replace Windows Notepad.exe with Metapad (which is free).

http://liquidninja.com/metapad/

Posted by: Stewart Vardaman at January 26, 2005 4:37 PM

I too just bought your Cool Websites book and am having the analog of this problem with my otherwise glorious Mac. In TextEdit, I can't save it as a .html file. The only file format options I'm given are RTF and Word Format, both of which refuse to allow me to add the suffix .html. Suggestions? THANKS so much for your time Dave :)

Posted by: Liz McKenna at March 2, 2005 7:11 AM

Righto, Liz! Check out:

http://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_do_you_save_html_files_with_macs_textedit.html

DaveT.

Posted by: Dave Taylor at March 2, 2005 7:46 AM

I need some advise. My wepage is more or less being held ransom by my webmaster because of her knowledge of html. If I need to make a change of any kind I need to wait a week plus for anything to get done. Now, she wants to charge me an up front fee for any changes before they are done. I can't even put on any links because I have to check with first. How tuff is it to use html and if I was able to learn it how can I get my web page away from her?

Posted by: Lee D at March 27, 2009 4:30 PM

Hi Dave,

I have tried saving my html in NotePad and WordPad exactly as you stated:

File name: not-yet.html
Save as type: Text Documents (*.txt)
Encoding: ANSI

But still when I try to view the page in my web browser, I still just see the html coding.

Thanks.

Posted by: Erica at May 4, 2009 10:15 PM

Erica, when you are seeing the SOURCE to your HTML page, can you tell us exactly what URL is being shown in the address bar of the Web browser? My bet is that you're ending up with something like "test.html.txt" somehow...

Posted by: Dave Taylor at May 5, 2009 8:20 AM

Hi Dave,

I want to run a news website which will be updated daily with news and blogs. How do I change content in the html files? Do I need any special software to load and update content daily? How do I load pictures and ad that I placed in my site?

Best regards,

Mbuyisi

Posted by: Mbuyisi at September 8, 2009 3:58 PM

Yes, but what about characters in unicode in the html page? Even if you have the same character set, what you see is gibberish. In other words
-open html page from the web
-see code (Ctrl-U)
-save code as

translates unicode into gibberish.

Posted by: scot at October 5, 2009 1:28 AM

Very timely info. Exactly what I needed for my little project. Thanks.

Posted by: K. Tuckerson at December 3, 2009 4:42 PM

I have something to say, now that you mention it, but ...

I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!