And if you prefer to restrict access to your notes by password, there are other ways to keep the notes private, including not letting people you don’t trust use your computer. Sure, text files aren’t locked away behind an encrypted account by default-unless you store them in an encrypted file partition managed by something like VeraCrypt or Microsoft’s Bitlocker. Every time you hit save in Notepad, your changes will end up on every device that uses the cloud app. If you prefer to work in the text format medium and also want cloud backup or synchronization capabilities, store your Notepad text files in a cloud file service like Dropbox or OneDrive. RELATED: What's the Difference Between Notepad and WordPad in Windows? No Cloud Syncing or Backup

If you need fancy pagination, try a word processing app like Microsoft Word. If you really can’t live without bold text, try WordPad. And, don’t forget the classic _adding emphasis_ using the underscore character. Asterisks make great bullet points, tabs can form indented lists, ALL CAPS serve as good headers, and repeated dashes or equal signs make great line separators. You can, however, use symbols and punctuation for simple formatting. It’s true: if you need text formatting features, such as bold, italics, or changing font sizes, Notepad is not the solution. But there are also ways to address Notepad’s shortcomings. For overall convenience, you might choose another app. We love Notepad, but we can’t say it is always the best solution for everyone. The company storing the data is the gatekeeper of your ideas. If you use a note-taking app, your notes might be locked behind a paid subscription account and stored in the cloud. You can migrate your notes to another app by opening them in any app that understands text files. Notepad lets you save your notes (as text files) exactly where you want them, and you have no one but your operating system to answer to about how you organize, copy, or back them up.

RELATED: What Are Character Encodings Like ANSI and Unicode, and How Do They Differ? You Stay in Control Other programs write their specially formatted notes in proprietary file formats or even databases that may not be easily readable in the future. Text files are as old as personal computers themselves (older, in fact), and as long as Windows writes its text files to an industry-standard format like ASCII or Unicode, it’s very likely that you’ll be able to read your notes on any computer platform far into the future.

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