Microsoft has officially launched the Notepad “Create a table” feature to all Windows 11 users. This feature was previously tested in the Windows Insider Program in November 2025 and is now generally available. This feature allows users to quickly insert tables in Notepad just like in Word, but the implementation is more lightweight and suitable for daily basic organization and recording.
The report pointed out that the table creation operation of the new version of Notepad is quite simple: after users click the New Table button on the format toolbar, they will see a grid selector and can directly select the required number of rows and columns by moving the cursor, or manually enter the specific number of rows and columns. After inserting a table, users can enter text in cells just like in a regular document, and apply formatting such as bold, italics, and underline. It also supports inserting hyperlinks into cells.
Unlike rich text editors such as Word, Notepad still adheres to the "lightweight" positioning. The bottom layer of this table function uses Markdown style syntax to store tables in .txt files in plain text form. When adding a column, the program will automatically add a "| ... |" cell structure to each row; when a new row is added, a line of text with "| ... |" will be appended at the end, so it will not introduce additional CPU or memory burden, and the overall resource usage level will still be close to that of traditional Notepad.
In terms of interaction, users can not only insert tables through the toolbar, but also right-click in the table area to insert or delete rows and columns, and delete the entire table with one click. To improve editing efficiency, Notepad supports directly selecting entire rows, columns, or tables without repeatedly dragging and selecting between cells. When the table layout is disrupted, you can also use the "Adapt columns to window width" option to automatically align column widths to the current window, eliminating the need to manually adjust the alignment with the ruler.
This feature is enabled by default, but if users do not want tables or rich text formats to appear in Notepad, they can turn off Markdown format support in the settings, thereby simultaneously disabling tables and related features such as bolding, italics, and underlining. In addition, the settings page also provides the option to turn off Copilot-related functions to simplify the interface and functions for users who do not need AI assistants.
In addition to tables, the update also brings a new AI text streaming output experience to Copilot+ PC-branded devices. Currently on supported models, users can right-click anywhere in Notepad and select "Write". When generating text, Notepad will present the AI answer verbatim in real time like a mainstream chatbot, instead of waiting for all content to be generated and displayed at once. Previously, AI text generation in Notepad would not display the "typing process" during background processing, and the experience was significantly different from services such as ChatGPT.
The report pointed out that this "streaming answer" presentation method will be first available on Copilot+ PCs, and will gradually be pushed to non-AI PCs in the coming weeks or months, allowing more notepads on Windows 11 devices to obtain a generative experience similar to real-time conversations. However, for users who do not want to use Copilot or AI functions in Notepad, they can also turn it off through settings to maintain the usage habits of traditional plain text editors.