It has been a few months since Microsoft sent an update to Windows 11 users that contained a new version of notepad. The new version added features like tabbed documents and setting color schemes however myself and others also noticed that the word wrap feature defaults to “on” every time the application is open, and it appears that there isn’t an easy way use the new notepad without turning it off each time. Hopefully this will get fixed soon, but I am losing hope as each new month goes by without it being addressed.
A quick search online talks about multiple ways to work around the issue by removing app aliases so the classic notepad opens but for now the best solution I have found is to simply uninstall the new notepad which will default associated documents back to the classic version. The simplest way to do this is to remove it using the “optional features” menu but it can also be removed via powershell via this command:
Get-AppxPackage Microsoft.WindowsNotepad | Remove-AppxPackage
For a few folks reading this who are wondering why I wouldn’t simply use notepad++, the answer is that I most certainly do. The issue I run into with notepad++ is that it will cache all open documents to prevent work from being lost and in my case I may be making small edits to highly sensitive documents and would prefer the content not to survive once the application is closed so there is a real use case scenario for having both.
May 3, 2023 
