Keystroke macros enable you to perform the same task on all open files, even if EditPad does not have a built-in option to perform that task on all open files. As an example, let’s say you have a bunch of files open that are use different encodings. You want to convert all the files to UTF-8.
Doing this for a single file is easy. Simply select Convert|Text Encoding in the menu, choose the “Encode” option, pick UTF-8, and click OK. But the Convert|Text Encoding command does not have an option to do this for all open files. Doing it manually for each file gets tedious very quickly.
Fortunately, you can easily automate this with a simple keystroke macro. Before you begin, activate the first file. Select Macros|Record Macro in the menu to start recording a new macro. Then convert the active file as described in the previous paragraph. Now, select Go|Next File in the menu. Finally, select Macros|Stop Recording in the menu to finish the macro.
Now you can use this macro to convert all open files to UTF-8 at any time. Activate the first file. Select Macros|Organize Macros in the menu. Choose the macro you just recorded. Set the Repeat value to a number that is equal to or greater than the number of files you have open. Set it to 1,000, for example, if you have hundreds of files open. Then click the Play Macro button.
The macro will be played back exactly as many times as you have files open, even if you specified a greater number of repetitions. The reason is that Go|Next File is aware whether it is being played back by a macro. Go|Next File automatically stops macro playback when a macro tries to play back this command when the last file is already active. So by recording Go|Next File as the last command in a macro, you can make the macro process all files, and have it stop after the last file was processed.