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How to edit or modify large text files in Windows

 

Did you tried to edit or modify a large text file and your text editor or any other application that you're using blocked your computer ? I mean a large text file means over a couple of .MB of text. If that's the case you may want to keep reading as I am going to show you my method to edit or modify large text files in Windows. As far as I remember, I was able to modify text files that had over 100 MB.

 

Step 1 - I can't open a large text file with Notepad or WordPad, it blocks my PC.

 

You're frustrated, you tried to open a large text file with default text editors that comes included with your Windows like Notepad or WordPad but your computer becomes unresponsive. Windows text editors are being designed to handle normal files with normal dimensions. For example, you are writing a normal document in WordPad or in Microsoft Office Suite and you are saving it. If you want to edit this file or looking to replace a word in that file with other word, you can use either, Notepad, WordPad or Office Word. The problems appears when you are trying to modify or edit large text files, because those editors can't handle properly very large text files as they are not able to manage your available RAM memory or probably they are not designed to work with such files. I am going to teach you how to edit and modify large text files in Windows. Before starting, you will need to download TextPad editor and install it. I am using this editor because it pushes the limit for opening a text file up to the limits of virtual memory so it's going to use properly the resources of your computer meaning that I doubt that you will ever find a better text editor. Also it works on Windows 2000 ( SP4 ), Server 2003, Windows XP ( both versions for 32 and 64 bits ) and also on Vista. So, if you downloaded TextPad and install it on your computer you should launch TextPad and the program will open and it will look like in this picture :

 

Step 2 - Learn to open large text files with TextPad editor

 

Now, if you don't want to see the tips window, uncheck the "Show tips on startup" and click Close button and the next time the program start the tips window will remain closed. Now, I am going to show you how I modified a large text file that contains over 60 MB of text. For this example I created myself a text file that contains one line of text repeating this message "This is a large text file, his size is over 50 MB - Modify this number with anything else : 27817281" until the text file has reached over 60 MB in size. I would like to mention that I've created this large text file with TextPad as other normal editors would stop responding. So I am going to open TextPad, go to the first tab called "File" click on it and choose "Open..." or you can press CTRL+O keyboard combination for a shortcut. See the picture below :

 

 

And now I am going to navigate to where my file exists on my computer. I will select the file that I want to open and then click on the "Open" button, like in the next picture :

 

 

After pressing the "Open" button, the large text file will be opening in the same TextPad window and I will be able to modify or edit the file, just like in the picture below.

 

This is the best text editor because it will now allow us to use the same commands that we are using in Windows defaul text editors like Notepad, WordPad or Office Word. But it won't work with normal keyboard shortcuts like CTRL+F if we want to find a word or CTRL+H if we want to replace something. For searching something on the file we will press the "F5" keyboard button and a small window will appear. If you want to replace something in TextPad you will need to press the "F8" keyboard button and again a new small window will appear asking us what to replace, just like in the same pictures below :

 

 

 

Now if you have TextPad installed, you can either choose to open a large text file in this way or you can do it in a shorter way. Navigate to the folder or location of your large text file and there do a right-click with your mouse on that file, and select "Open With..." and you should see TextPad, if you see it click on it and the file will be opening in TextPad, if not choose "Choose Program" and locate the folder where you have installed TextPad, for example on my computer ( I am running Windows XP SP3 ) it's located in "C:\Program Files\TextPad 5". You can see my example in the next picture :

 

 

I guess that now you know how to edit or modify large text files and I am not going to show you other screenshots with the F5 or F8 keyboard buttons for finding or replacing characters. It is very easy to use and the purpose of this article was to show people that anyone can easily modify such files in seconds. Probably many of you are wondering if there is a limit for this program. Yes, you are being limited by your computer resources, it will affect your CPU and RAM resources so if you have a faster computer you will be able to handle easily large text files while somebody else with an older computer will not have the same privilege. Even so, don't worry even with an older computer you should be able to work excellent with TextPad.