VS Code for Office Users: 10 Features That Beat Notepad

Visual Studio Code (VS Code) is a free editor from Microsoft. Programmers use it for code, but its text tools are just as useful for anyone who cleans lists, CSV exports and SQL.

The 10 features

1. Multi-cursor: Alt+click to place several cursors and type in many places at once.
2. Select all matches: select a word, press Ctrl+Shift+L — every occurrence gets a cursor.
3. Column (box) selection: Shift+Alt+drag to select a vertical block, e.g. the first 6 characters of every line.
4. Find and replace with regex: Ctrl+H, click .*. Replace \s+$ with nothing to strip trailing spaces from every line. See our regex guide.
5. Sort and de-duplicate lines: Ctrl+Shift+P → “Sort Lines Ascending”, then “Delete Duplicate Lines”.
6. Compare two files: right-click a file → “Select for Compare”, then the other → “Compare with Selected”. Changes are highlighted line by line.
7. Join lines: select lines and run “Join Lines” — turn a column of IDs into one line, then add commas with replace.
8. Change case: Command Palette → “Transform to Uppercase / Lowercase / Title Case”.
9. Big files: opens multi-hundred-MB logs and exports that make Notepad freeze.
10. CSV viewing: extensions such as Rainbow CSV colour each column so misaligned rows jump out.

Example: from an Excel column to a SQL list

Paste 500 customer codes, select all, Ctrl+H with regex: find ^(.*)$, replace with '$1',. Join lines, remove the last comma — ready for WHERE code IN (…).

Next step: Git for beginners to keep versions of your work.