How to Open Notepad Using PowerShell (With Examples)

Often you may want to use PowerShell to open Notepad on your computer.

You can use the following methods to do so:

Method 1: Open Notepad Using PowerShell

Start-Process 'C:\windows\system32\notepad.exe'

This particular example will open the Notepad application on your computer by specifying the path where the executable is located.

Method 2: Open Specific File in Notepad Using PowerShell

notepad.exe c:\users\bobbi\players.txt

This particular example will open the text file named players.txt in Notepad on your computer.

The following example shows how to use this syntax in practice.

Example 1: Open Notepad Using PowerShell

Suppose that we would like to use PowerShell to open Notepad on our computer.

We can use the following syntax to do so:

Start-Process 'C:\windows\system32\notepad.exe'

The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:

PowerShell open Notepad

Once we run this command, the Notepad application will automatically open:

Note: You can find the complete documentation for the Start-Process cmdlet in PowerShell here.

Suppose that we have a file named players.txt saved in the following location:

Suppose that we would like to use PowerShell to open this specific file in Notepad.

We can use the following syntax to do so:

notepad.exe c:\users\bobbi\players.txt

The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:

PowerShell open file in Notepad

Once we run this command, this text file will automatically be opened in Notepad:

Feel free to specify any path that you would like to open a specific file on your own computer.