Question

I write some codes for simple text editor in C# and I use rich text box control, I found a problem that I can’t solve. The problem is when I save a file in my text editor and then try to reopen it using windows notepad, it become in one line, this is the example

This is when I write and save from my app

After I save it and open in windows notepad it becomes like this

here are my code for saving a fie

try
{
    saveFileDialog1.ShowDialog();
    this.Text = file = toolStripTextBox1.Text = saveFileDialog1.FileName;
    isi = richTextBox1.Text;
    write = new System.IO.StreamWriter(file);
    write.WriteLine(isi);
    write.Close();
    toolStripStatusLabel2.Text = "Saved";
}
catch (Exception)
{
    toolStripStatusLabel2.Text = "Save cancelled by user";
}

do you have any idea how to fix it?

Answer 1

You are probably getting this because you are trying to save richTextBox1.Text (the whole text) in one line only using the following code

isi = richTextBox1.Text;
write = new System.IO.StreamWriter(file);
write.WriteLine(isi);
write.Close();

It’s recommended to use write.WriteLine() on a specific line number in richTextBox1 then move to another line.

Example

 for (int i = 0; i < richTextBox1.Lines.Length; i++)
 {
      write.WriteLine(richTextBox1.Lines[i]);
 }
write.Close();

Another Solution

---

There’s already a built-in function for RichTextBox to save a file with a specific encoding. You may use RichTextBox.SaveFile() for this purpose.

Example

RichTextBox.SaveFile(string path, RichTextBoxStreamType);

Where path represents saveFileDialog1.FileName in your code. For RichTextBoxStreamType, it’s best to set it as RichTextBoxStreamType.PlainText as long as you do not use RTF such as Color/Font/Protection/Indent/etc…

Then, you may read the file again using the following method

RichTextBox.LoadFile(string path, RichTextBoxStreamType);

NOTICE: If the file is not in RTF and you try to read it in RTF (RichTextBox.LoadFile(string path, RichTextBoxStreamType.RichText);)
you may encounter formatting errors. In this case, you’ll need to catch the exception and read the file in a Plain or Unicode encoding.

Example

RichTextBox _RichTextBox = new RichTextBox();
try
{
     _RichTextBox.LoadFile(@"D:\Resources\text.txt", RichTextBoxStreamType.RichText);
}
catch (Exception EX)
{
     if (EX.Message.ToLower().Contains("format is not valid"))
     {
          _RichTextBox.LoadFile(@"D:\Resources\text.txt", RichTextBoxStreamType.PlainText);
     }
}

Thanks,

I hope you find this helpful 🙂