Find and Replace Text in Notepad in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Help Forums (2025)

Hello Shawn -

New member here

I read this post for the first time today

For a year or more now I have noticed that when I go to "Find" in Notepad, it annoyingly will sometimes be on Direction "Up" instead of "Down" and in that whole year I have never gotten used to having to check that when my searches are not returning the expected results. I always figured that something had changed in Microsoft to make it start doing that, but I never could find where. Your post provides the first answer I've ever had for that. It's a "Feature" now. Oh, how I hate new "features" sometimes . . .

I used Find in Notepad for over 10 years, where it is always "Down" and if I WANT "Up" I know where to go to get it!

I have learned that I can delete registry keys and make it revert back to default, and I may have even found the key to edit to make it be "Down" on the next use.

But I fear that because of this new "feature" functionality, that as soon as I finish a Find in the "up" direction, it's going to remember that and default back to "up" the next time, defeating the purpose of making the registry setting.

Can you share any wisdom with me?

Thank you for ANYTHING you can tell me!

Jeff S said:

Hello Shawn -

New member here

I read this post for the first time today

For a year or more now I have noticed that when I go to "Find" in Notepad, it annoyingly will sometimes be on Direction "Up" instead of "Down" and in that whole year I have never gotten used to having to check that when my searches are not returning the expected results. I always figured that something had changed in Microsoft to make it start doing that, but I never could find where. Your post provides the first answer I've ever had for that. It's a "Feature" now. Oh, how I hate new "features" sometimes . . .

I used Find in Notepad for over 10 years, where it is always "Down" and if I WANT "Up" I know where to go to get it!

I have learned that I can delete registry keys and make it revert back to default, and I may have even found the key to edit to make it be "Down" on the next use.

But I fear that because of this new "feature" functionality, that as soon as I finish a Find in the "up" direction, it's going to remember that and default back to "up" the next time, defeating the purpose of making the registry setting.

Can you share any wisdom with me?

Thank you for ANYTHING you can tell me!

Hello Jeff, and welcome to Ten Forums.

I'm not aware of a way to force "Up" or "Down" by default.

Current choices for Find in Notepad:

Brink said:

Hello Jeff, and welcome to Ten Forums.

I'm not aware of a way to force "Up" or "Down" by default.

Crap.

And I'm betting that if there were a way, you would know it!

Thank you Shawn for writing me back

One problem occurs when you want to find or 'replace with' the Tab character, something you may want to do to change a tab separated variable (.tsv) file into a comma separated variable (.csv) one (or vice versa). You cannot type a Tab into either of the boxes.

Finding tabs is easy, you just select a tab before searching. Whatever you have selected is automatically entered in the 'Find what' box.....

Replacing with a tab can be more of a problem. The solution is to type a tab in Notepad, select and cut it, then paste it into the 'replace with' box.

Jeff S said:

For a year or more now I have noticed that when I go to "Find" in Notepad, it annoyingly will sometimes be on Direction "Up" instead of "Down" .. I always figured that something had changed in Microsoft to make it start doing that, but I never could find where. … But I fear that because of this new "feature" functionality, that as soon as I finish a Find in the "up" direction, it's going to remember that and default back to "up" the next time, defeating the purpose of making the registry setting.

I have only ever seen Notepad start with Find/Replace set to Up if I had set it that way the last time I used it.

Searching Down remains its default behaviour i.e. its behaviour unless it gets changed manually by the user.

The "to edit to make it be "Down" on the next use" is
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Notepad
Value

Name fReverse
Data 0 [by default, Find Down]
Data 1 [Find Up]

- This Registry key is rewritten every time Notepad closes so whatever state Find was in at last use will always be written to the Registry.
- The Value fReverse is created the first time Find is set to Up manually. Before that, it does not exist.

Denis

Bree said:

One problem occurs when you want to find or 'replace with' the Tab character ...

What an excellent little trick.

Thanks,
Denis

Try3 said:

I have only ever seen Notepad start with Find/Replace set to Up if I had set it that way the last time I used it.

Searching Down remains its default behaviour i.e. its behaviour unless it gets changed manually by the user.

Correct. And whenever I did a Find that I used Up on the last Find, then the next time I open the Find it is defaulting to Up. In other words, it is defaulting to Up if that was how I last used it.

THAT is what's driving me NUTS!

When go to do a Find I expect it to be in the Down position each time I open it, and breaks my train of thought when it doens't behave like I expect, and I have to stop what I'm doing and go reset it to Down. if I need Up I know where to get it! This comes from having used it that way for many many years (I said over 10 years, it's probably been over 20 years). I hate the change, and not being given a choice!

Try3 said:

The "to edit to make it be "Down" on the next use" is
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Notepad
Value

Name fReverse
Data 0 [by default, Find Down]
Data 1 [Find Up]

- This Registry key is rewritten every time Notepad closes so whatever state Find was in at last use will always be written to the Registry.
- The Value fReverse is created the first time Find is set to Up manually. Before that, it does not exist.

Denis

Thank you for giving me the correct key and settings. I suspected, but did not know for sure, and I appreciate your help there.

Two things:

#1, if I set the key that way, but then the next time I do a Find if it was in the Up direction, won't it re-write (or re-set) the registry key? Do you know a way to make that key be read-only, so it can't be changed?

#2, if I do NOT close Notepad, but the last Find I did was Up, then the next time I open Find it is defaulting to Up even though I have not closed the Notepad. Is there any way I can make it stop doing that?

My wife insists that this is an unimportant issue, and that all of the world will just adjust their workflow to use it the new way. But it's like Chinese water torture to me. I use Find in a very large Notepad file all day every day, and while I have had to get used to this extra step in my thought process, it STILL bugs the be-jeebers out of me EVERY TIME I have to do it . . . .

Thank you again for acknowleding me and taking time to help me with this.

Jeff,

#1 Yes. No.
#2 No.

I know Notepad in Windows XP & in Windows 10 Version 1709 always started with Find set to Down every time you used Find even during the same Notepad session & even if you had set it to Up the last time you used it.
- I don't know when the change in behaviour took place.
- You can extract the Notepad.exe from one of your old [Ver 1709 or earlier] system images and use that in your current version if the thing matters to you that much.

By the way, I do not understand why you are doing so much work in Notepad. It is very limited in capability. Even the other built-in component [WordPad at "%ProgramFiles%\Windows NT\Accessories\wordpad.exe"] is more capable than Notepad and even the free versions of other word processors are.

Denis