File open

Shortcut: Ctrl+O

The file open dialog allows you to choose one or more files to open in UltraEdit. This dialog uses a standard Microsoft Windows explorer window for browsing and accessing the computer hard drives and other volumes, so any file/folder accessible through Windows explorer is accessible through the file open dialog.

Note: Due to the way Windows handles user-based permissions via UAC in relation to mapped network drives, if UltraEdit is running as administrator (or any other user), the drives mapped for the regular user may not be visible/accessible. For more information, see this Microsoft article.

File name
You can type the name of the file you want to open here. You can also click the drop down to open the recent paths history for this field. You can enter DOS-based filters into this field to filter the current directory in the file list. For example, typing "*.txt" and pressing Enter would not open any files, but would only show files with a .txt file extension. You can also enter into this field full or relative file paths if the file you're wanting to open is outside of the active folder.

File filter
This drop down (to the right of the File name field) includes a list of different file types for filtering files by extension. You can modify this list in Settings » File types.

ADS Stream
Alternate data streams allow files to be associated with more than one data stream. For example, a file named "text.txt" can have an ADS with the name of text.txt:secret.txt (of form filename:ads) that can only be accessed by knowing the ADS name or by specialized directory browsing programs.

Alternate streams are not detectable in the original file's size but are lost when the original file (in the example above, "text.txt") is deleted, or when the file is copied or moved to a partition that doesn't support ADS (e.g. a FAT partition, a floppy disk, or a network share). While ADS is a useful feature, it can also easily eat up hard disk space if forgotten about or not detected.

This feature is only supported if files are on an NTFS drive.

Open as binary
If checked, forces UltraEdit to treat the file as binary and opens it in Hex mode.

Encoding
Allows you to manually set an encoding for the file to be opened. This can be useful where you need a specific endoging for the file, but the file's encoding is impossible to determine with automated detection routines. Unless you know for sure that you need this option, it's recommended to leave it set at its default value: "Auto detect ASCII/Unicode."

Open
Clicking this button opens the selected file(s) or the file name entered into the File name field. Click the drop down arrow in this button for the Open as read-only option.

Open as read-only
If selected, this will immediately open the selected file(s) or the file name entered into the File name field as read-only (no modifications may be made to the file while it is open in UltraEdit).