Removing Closing pop up on Notepad

Question

I have a strange question and I'm no sure is it possible or not. I'm using notepad frequently and I end up with more than 10-15 different files open. Most of them I just use for writing down quick snippets, that are used for a brief period of time. The thing is when you close a unsaved instance of notepad it's always asking you do you want to save changes. There is a pop-up:

Is there any way to remove this. So it automatically does not save unsaved documents and close notepad. This is OK when you have opened 2-3 separated notepads but I have a lot of them and this pop-up is annoying when you have to click it for every single one.

Thanks xD.

Answer 1

You can close all open instances of Notepad without seeing such prompts by opening a command prompt window and using the taskkill command with the /f option to close the windows:

taskkill /f /im notepad.exe

By using the /f option, you force the operating system to close the windows, even if there is unsaved information in them. The /im parameter specifies the image name for processes you wish to close. You can see other options to the command by typing taskkill /? at a command prompt.

Answer 2

There are a few ways to work around this, depending on what you want to do with the data you're holding.

If you're using these Notepad windows as holders for text that you want to copy-paste into other applications, you could use a 3rd party clipboard manager to manage the stack for you.

If they're simple to-do items, you could consider using the included Sticky Notes feature. They will, however, persist through restarts etc. until you delete them. On the plus side, they won't take up space in the taskbar.

If you absolutely must use Windows Notepad for some reason, then there are window-management and macro utilities that you could potentially set up to auto-press "don't save" when the prompt appears. This is the hackiest solution.

If none of these apply, or you just prefer to have a large space to work with your text, then it's probably time to upgrade to Notepad++ (it's free!) This answer will show you how you can configure it to persist your session so that it will never ask you to save open files, which is almost what you want. Similar to sticky notes, the open files will persist until explicitly closed. Using a new editor also comes with the benefits of more powerful features, and the ability to use tabs for your multiple documents.

I would recommend using Notepad++ over the other options, but if you want to provide a more specific use case, then please leave a comment!