Notepad formatting in Windows 11: how to format, clear and turn it off

Notepad in Windows 11 can format text: select words and use the formatting toolbar at the top of the window for bold, italic, links, headings and lists, or type Markdown syntax directly. To remove formatting, use Clear formatting on the toolbar or in the Edit menu. If you prefer a plain text editor, turn the feature off in Settings under Text Formatting.

This guide covers every formatting option Notepad offers today, how the formatted and Markdown views relate, how saving works, and how to clear or disable formatting completely.

What formatting options does Notepad have?

Notepad's formatting is lightweight and based on Markdown, so every style it applies maps to plain Markdown syntax in the file. Microsoft introduced it in Notepad version 11.2504.52.0 in May 2025 (first to Windows Insiders, the rollout we covered when it arrived) and has extended it since. The current option set:

• Bold and italic text
• Hyperlinks (clickable with Ctrl + click)
• Headings, chosen from the heading menu on the toolbar
• Bulleted and numbered lists, plus nested lists
• Strikethrough
• Tables, inserted from the toolbar or typed as Markdown table syntax

Strikethrough and nested lists arrived with Notepad 11.2512.10.0, and tables with Notepad 11.2510.6.0. Both updates started in the Canary and Dev channels, so if an option is missing, update Notepad from the Microsoft Store and check again later. What Notepad does not offer is fonts per word, colors or text size per paragraph: it is not a replacement for WordPad or a word processor.

How to format text in Notepad

Formatting text in Notepad works like in any editor: select the text, then pick a style from the toolbar, or turn a style on and keep typing. The toolbar appears below the menu bar whenever formatting is enabled.

1. Open Notepad and type or paste your text.
2. Select the words you want to style.
3. Click Bold or Italic on the toolbar, or press Ctrl + B or Ctrl + I.
4. For a heading, place the cursor in the line and choose a heading level from the heading menu.
5. For a list, click the bulleted or numbered list button, or start a line with "- " or "1. ".
6. For a table, choose Table on the toolbar, then add or remove rows and columns from the right-click menu or the toolbar's Table menu.

You can also skip the toolbar and type Markdown: **bold**, *italic*, # for a heading, ~~strikethrough~~. Notepad renders the result as you type in the formatted view.

How to add a link in Notepad

Notepad adds a hyperlink with Ctrl + K. Select the text that should become the link, press Ctrl + K (or click the Link button on the toolbar), and enter the web address. In the formatted view the link is clickable: hold Ctrl and click it to open the page in your default browser. In the Markdown view the same link shows as [text](address), which is what gets saved in the file.

How to clear formatting in Notepad

Notepad clears formatting with the clear formatting option on the toolbar or in the Edit menu. Select the styled text first to clean only that part, or select everything with Ctrl + A to return the whole document to plain text. In our hands-on test of the first release, Ctrl + Space also cleared formatting from the selection.

Clearing formatting removes the styles and the Markdown markers that produce them, so the text itself stays. If you only want to see the raw characters without losing anything, switch to the Markdown view instead (next section).

Formatted view vs Markdown view

Notepad shows every formatted document in one of two views, and switching never changes the content. The formatted view renders bold, headings and lists the way they look in a document. The Markdown (syntax) view shows the raw characters, such as asterisks and hash signs, which is what is stored in the file.

Switch between them in two ways:

• View > Markdown, then Formatted or Syntax
• The toggle in the status bar at the bottom of the window, which also shows which mode the current tab uses

The Markdown view is the quickest way to check exactly what a document contains before you share it or paste it into another app.

Saving formatted text: .md vs .txt

Formatted text in Notepad only survives when you save the file as Markdown (.md). When a document contains formatting and you save it, Notepad warns that a plain .txt file loses the formatting and offers the Markdown format. Use File > Save as and give the file a .md extension, for example notes.md.

Because .md files are plain text underneath, any other editor can open them, and Markdown-aware apps render them with the same styles.

How to paste with formatting in Notepad

Notepad treats formatting per tab, so pasting depends on the state of the target document. In our test of the first release, pasting formatted text into a new, empty tab produced plain text, while pasting into a tab that already used formatting kept bold, italics and links. If your paste comes out plain, apply any formatting in the target tab first (or switch it to the formatted view) and paste again. Formatted text copied out of Notepad pasted correctly into LibreOffice Writer in the same test.

To go the other way and strip styles from text copied from a web page or Word, paste it into a tab with formatting off, or paste and then use Clear formatting. Turning formatting off entirely makes Notepad paste everything as plain text, which is how many people use it to clean up clipboard contents.

How to turn off formatting in Notepad

You can disable formatting in Notepad completely, and the app then behaves like the classic plain text editor with no toolbar.

1. Open Notepad.
2. Click the Settings (gear) icon in the top-right corner.
3. Under Text Formatting, switch Formatting off.
4. Confirm with Turn off, then click the back arrow.

Formatting is on by default. Turn the switch back on at any time to get the toolbar back.

FAQ

Related: Markdown formatting testing in Notepad, find text in all files of a folder