PCA Forums

7Zip: https://www.7-zip.org/

I have been a long time user of Winzip, but the last good version they made before it became a bloated piece of adware garbage was version 11, and sadly that version doesn't play nice with Win10. I tried REAL HARD to use WinZip 20 (I actually paid for a license), but it's become a raging dumpster fire.

I have been using 7Zip Portable on my flash drive for years, but I never was a big fan of the desktop version, however they have greatly improved it over the years and, functionally, it does everything WinZip 11 ever did, only better and FREE.


Notepad++: https://notepad-plus-plus.org/

I have used a text editor called TextPad for something like 20 years. Like Notepad++ it's designed for coding, and very full featured, but can also be used for basic text files. I own a lifetime license for Textpad and up until recently have been very happy with it, however it has become problematic under Win10. There's a strange problem that has come up on all my PCs where sometimes Textpad doesn't open immediately (and I mean like 20+ seconds go by before it opens) when you double-click on an associated file. It opens immediately if you open the app via a shortcut, but not if you open a text file.

It seems to be an issue with the context menu and I tried many suggested fixes, but the problem always comes back. I finally gave up and switched to Notepad++ which is free (although I sent the author a donation).

I have used Notepad++ in the past, but I didn't like it's default configuration which is tailored for software coding. However, I found you can turn all of that off and use it as a straight text editor. Some suggestions to turn off annoying things in Notepad++:

CHANGE DEFAULT FONT:
- Choose the menu option Settings - Style Configurator…
- In the Style configurator dialog, choose the Global Styles language.
- Then , select the Default Style style.
- Finally, in the Font Style area, you can select your favourite font and/or its size, too.

DISABLE AUTO COMPLETE AND ARGUMENT SUGGESTIONS:
- Go to Settings > Preferences... > Auto-completion
- UnCheck Enable Auto-completion on each input
- UnCheck Function parameter hint on input (if you have this option)

DISABLE AUTO-OPEN PREVIOUS FILES:
- Settings -> Preferences -> Uncheck "Remember the current session for next launch" on Settings -> Preferences -> Backup.

HIDE LINE NUMBERS:
- Settings -> Preferences -> Editing -> uncheck "Display line number"

Yeah winzip sucks. Version 11 was the last best version. I've been using WinRAR mostly, but I still use version 11 with windows 7.

Same here. I've been on 7zip for some time now (was using WinRAR) and I've moved on to NP++ as well.
Both solid apps IMHO.

Notepad + + has been a go-to for as long as I can remember for work use. It handles large log files without an issue and makes parsing things a lot easier.