Notepad Opens Off the Screen – Not Showing on Desktop

I opened Notepad to paste some notes down but Notepad opened off the computer screen. I could not move the Notepad to a better position because I could not get to the title bar to re-position the box. I tried a few things to fix this problem. I tried to maximize and minimize the window, open a new Notepad, re-size the Notepad, and more. Absolutely nothing would get the Notepad to show on the desktop correctly.

Here is a screenshot of the Notepad.exe when it opened with half the box not showing on the desktop. As you can see, even if I started typing into this Notepad, the text would not be visible to me until I reached the viewable point.

 Notepad Opens Off the Screen – Solution

You will need to enter your Windows Registry to fix this problem.

1. Go to the windows’ start menu and in windows 7 PC’s search box, type regedit as shown in image 1 below. In windows XP, you type the same command on the “run” dialog box at start menu.

2. You will reach the registry database. You can see there are five layers of the registry; HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, HKEY_CURRENT_USER, HKEY_LOCAL MACHINE, HKEY_USERS and HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG.

3. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER.

4. Then click on the Software folder, the Microsoft folder, and then the Notepad folder.

5. In the right column you will see the DWORD entries you need to edit.

6. You will need to change the DWORD value to the following:

iWindowPosX : 2c2  (my previous setting was 68a)
iWindowPosY : 8a (was 10)
iWindowPosDX : 200 (was 242)
iWindowPosDY: 200 (was 17c)

This would set default position to in the middle of your screen. You can resize and position Notepad window later as you wish.

Please note that you must log off for changes to work. If you do not do this then this reg edit will not work!

Create a REG file to Move Notepad Back onto the Screen

1. Paste the following text into a notepad file and save it as notepadfix.reg

2. After you have saved the file then go to where it is stored on your computer and double click on it. This will change the registry settings for you.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Notepad]
"iWindowPosX"=dword:000002c2
"iWindowPosY"=dword:0000008a
"iWindowPosDX"=dword:00000200
"iWindowPosDY"=dword:00000200

3. Please note that you must log off for changes to work. If you do not do this then this reg edit will not work!

You can also delete the registry key for notepad in the registry and then restart the Notepad. I have not tried this one so try at your own risk.

1. Click on Start > Run > and type regedit.exe just like above.

2. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Notepad

3. Right click on the ‘notepad’ key, and choose delete.

4. Then start  notepad again to see what happens.

Sometimes Notepad Just Needs Re-sizing

You to manually resize the notepad by hovering your mouse arrow on any box edge. The cursor will turn into an arrow. When it is an arrow you can hold your left mouse button in and move the borders.

Notepad Opens in a Minimized or Maximized Window

If Notepad is opening as a minimized or maximized window then this is easy fixed.

1. Go to the start menu where you will see the notepad icon. Could be in the accessories folder.
2. Right click on the icon and a menu will appear. Choose Properties from the menu.
3. The Notepad properties will open. In Run as section select Normal Window. See the screenshot below.

Hope these simple tutorials fixed your Notepad problem.