Enabling the status bar / line number indicator for Notepad in Windows

Notepad is one of the most commonly used application in Windows. Recently I was doing some code reviews and since Notepad wasn’t showing me line numbers, I had to load up another bulky editor which was a real pain.

In order to enable line number indication and to enable the status bar in Notepad, we need to do some simple registry editing –

1. Start the registry editor (Start > Run, type regedit.exe and press enter)

2. Goto the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Notepad section

3. For the “StatusBar” key, change the REG_DWORD value to 1 (Double click, type “1”, Click OK)

Close the registry editor, and your Notepad should now be able to display the status bar along with the line/column count. Pretty cool.

If editing the registry seems like a scary proposition to you, click here to download a registry script. Run it by double clicking.

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