The Text Editor is a very basic text editor that can read and save ASCII text files, and is not intended to be a fully featured word processor. It supports basic functions like "Cut and Paste", searching, and word wrap.

When you start Text Editor, you will see the usual menu bar and tool bar (which provides quick access to functions in the menus), and a main view where you can read and edit text files. In the upper right corner you will see, in addition to the usual "x" to close the window, a button labeled "Ok". The "x" button will close Text Editor without saving (or asking you to save) the file, while the "Ok" button will save the file before closing the application.

To open a file, go to File&arrow;Open, or press the Open button on the toolbar (an open folder), and the Open File dialog will appear. The main view you see is a list of all the files and directories in the current directory (usually /). You can change which files are visible with the two pulldown menus on the bottom of the dialog. The menu on the left lets you chose where to look for the files. If it is set to "Documents" you will only see files that are in your documents tab, while if it is set to "Files" you will see all the files and directories on your file system (All Files is like Files except that hidden files are visible). The menu on the right lets you select which types of files to view. "All" will display all the files that are available based on the what you have selected in the left menu, while "Text" will display all files ending in ".txt". The "Name" field lets you enter the name of the file to open in the current directory. When you have selected the file you wish to open, press "Ok" in the upper right hand corner.

To create a new file, select File&arrow;New, or press the new file button on the toolbar (a blank page). This will ask you to save the current file (if there is one) and then close it, and a blank file should then be available.

Once you are done changing the file, you will want to save it. Youc can do this by going to File&arrow;Save. If the file has already been saved, or you opened it, it will simply be saved over the old version, however if you started with a new file, the Save dialog will open. To avoid saving over a file you have already saved, or that you opened and modified, you can chose File&arrow;Save As instead. The Save dialog looks the same as the Open dialog, with all the fields doing the same thing as before, with the exception of the "Name" field. Unless you want to save over a file, you must enter the name of the new file in this field. Once you have entered the name of the file, move into the directory you want to save it in in the main view and press "Ok" to save it ("x" cancels the save).

For a more detailed description of Cut and Paste in Opie, see (add link to cut and paste here). To cut or copy text to the clipboard, highlight the text and select Edit&arrow;Copy to add it without deleting the original text, or Edit&arrow;Cut to add it to the clipboard and delete the original text. Then move the cursor to where you want to paste the text and chose Edit&arrow;Paste. These three menu items do the same thing as those in the Clipboard Applet (they even use the same clipboard), and can also be access from their respective icons in the toolbar.

To insert the date and time, chose Edit&arrow;Insert Time and Date.