Dear Susan, Notepad is a simple text editor used for writing plain text files. Press WinKey+R, type notepad and hit Enter to start it up. You can also right-click on a text file in Windows Explorer and select Edit. But there's also WordPad -- a no-frills version of Word. It's suitable for creating simple documents. It's in the Accessories menu a few entries below Notepad. Or press WinKey+R and type wordpad, good luck, John PS: Sounds like your system could do with a good cleaning. Paul has some great step-by-step guides in his vast archive, but he would need to know which version of Windows you are using.