Hexadecimal Patch Creation Opening Inserting Deleting Data in Files

No Size Limit!

Hex Editor does not force any limit on file's size. Any file supported by the underlying file system (FAT, FAT32 or NTFS) is supported.

See the Opening Documents section for more information.

Basic File Editing

Basic file editing include writing to file (direct file modification), inserting data to a file, deleting data from a file, inserting another file, working with clipboard, positioning within a file, changing file's size, filling file's data.

Find

The Find command is used to locate specific pattern in a file. The Find Dialog is used to specify the pattern to search for, as well as a number of additional options.

When the pattern is found, the cursor is moved to the beginning of located pattern. To continue searching, execute the Find » Find Next or Find » Find Previous commands.

See the Find section for more information.

Replace

The Replace command is used to locate a specific pattern in a file and replace it with another pattern. The Find & Replace Dialog is used to specify both patterns, as well as a number of additional options. It is not required that the size of the search and replace patterns equals, in addition, the replace pattern may be empty. In the latter case, found pattern occurrences are removed from the document.

When you press the Replace button for the first time, Hex Editor starts searching for a pattern. When pattern is located, the cursor is moved to the beginning of the pattern and a Find & Replace Dialog is displayed again. Now you have a choice of pressing Find Next button to skip this match and search for another, or Replace button to replace this match and continue searching.

The direction of the next search is governed by the "Search up" or "Search down" option.

When there are no more matches, the message box is displayed.

See the Replace section for more information.

Unlimited Undo and Redo

Hex Editor provides support for an unlimited number of operations in document's operation history. To browse through the operations in the history, use the Undo or Redo commands, as well as a special History Tool Window (see below).

See the Operation History Overview section for more information.

Operation History Saving & Loading

The entire operation history may be compressed and saved to a disk file. It then may be loaded and applied to the same document, effectively restoring all states and branches.

See the Working with History section for more information.

Customizable Editor Color Schemes

You can customize the every visible aspect of the editor window, that is, the font and colors of each window element may be customized. For convenience, these customizations may be saved as a scheme. Hex Editor also provides a number of professionally designed color schemes that you may use to improve your productivity.

See the Layout and Color Schemes section for more information.

Patch Creation

A patch is a difference between two states of a document. In most cases the size of this difference is much smaller than the size of the file itself. Hex Editor supports creating a special patch file, which contains all modifications made to an opened document. The patch can subsequently be distributed and applied to the same file resulting in the same modifications being made to a file.

Hex Editor does not support applying patches in its framework. Instead, the separate application, PatchApply.exe is provided for this purpose. Alternatively, Patch API provides several other methods of applying patches.

See the Creating Patches section for more information.

Different View Types

Any editor window may be configured to display data in one of the following view type:

View Type	Cell Size	Encoding
Hex Bytes	1 byte	0x00 to 0xFF unsigned byte-size integer, displayed in hexadecimal
Decimal Bytes	1 byte	0 to 255 (0 to 2⁸-1) unsigned byte-size integer, displayed in decimal
Hex Words	2 bytes	0x0000 to 0xFFFF unsigned word-size integer, displayed in hexadecimal
Decimal Words	2 bytes	0 to 65,535 (0 to 2¹⁶-1) unsigned words-size integer, displayed in decimal
Hex Double Words	4 bytes	0x00000000 to 0xFFFFFFFF unsigned double word-size integer, displayed in hexadecimal
Decimal Double Words	4 bytes	0 to 4,294,967,295 (0 to 2³²-1) unsigned double word-size integer, displayed in decimal
Hex Quad Words	8 bytes	0x0000000000000000 to 0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF unsigned quad word-size integer, displayed in hexadecimal
Decimal Quad Words	8 bytes	0 to 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 (0 to 2⁶⁴-1) unsigned quad word-size integer, displayed in decimal
Float	4 bytes	Single-precision floating-point number (IEEE 754)
Double	8 bytes	Double-precision floating-point number (IEEE 754)

See the View Types section for more information.

Customizable User Interface

Hex Editor is a highly customizable application. You can customize almost every feature or module. You can customize toolbars, keyboard shortcuts, the placement, layout and color schemes of editor windows, a list of directories that are used to search for included files and an associations between a structure scheme and file extension.

In addition, most interface dialogs, especially those that encapsulate a Pattern Dialog, allow you to change their size. The size is then saved and restored next time you use this dialog. Most dialog's fields also store the values you entered into them and provide you with a list of last recently used values.

See the Customization Overview section for more information.

File Attributes Tool Window

The Attributes Tool Window displays the current file's attributes. It also allows you to modify the state of some attributes.

See the Attributes Tool Window section for more information.

History Browsing

History Tool Window displays the operation history of the current document.

Operations are displayed in a list in ascending order: older operations are at the top and newer operations are at the bottom. Similar operations (operations of the same type) can be grouped, which is a default behavior. The History » Group Same Operations switch is used to turn grouping on or off.

Branches are marked with a special overlay icon, as well as groups. To switch to a given operation, click on it in a list. All document windows are immediately updated to reflect changes. The selected operation becomes a current operation.

See the History Tool Window section for more information.

History Purge

History Purge provides you with four ways of purging an operation history:

Clear history - all operations in a history are deleted. The document state is NOT changed, all modifications are "merged" into the single operation, which becomes an operation list root.
Purge redo tail - all phantom operations (or operation tail) are dropped and removed.
Purge branches - all branches except the current one are dropped and removed.
Purge all - remove all operations except the very first one. In most cases (if Clear History command was not used), this root operation is "Open" or "New".

See the Working with History section for more information.

Pattern Coloring (max. 3 rules)

Hex Editor provides a feature called Pattern Coloring that can be used to automatically highlight specific patterns in an edited document. You define a pattern and specify the coloring applied to it in an editor window.

A Pattern Coloring Tool Window is used to define one or more patterns and coloring rules. For each defined pattern, background color, foreground (text) color, outline color and rounded edges flag are defined. It is recommended to specify semi-transparent background colors. In this case, if several modules apply coloring to the same editor's cell, it is still possible to differentiate them.

Standard Edition allows you to define at most 3 coloring rules.

See the Pattern Coloring Overview section for more information.

Multiple Selection

The unique multiple selection concept is used throughout the Hex Editor. A multiple selection is a collection of contiguous ranges. Such selection may arise as a result of user's action or as a result of executing a command. All Hex Editor's commands and modules fully support multiple selections and work with them in a very efficient way.

See the Multiple Selection section for more information.

Selection Saving & Loading

A multiple selection of any complexity may be compressed and saved to a file. It then may be loaded to any document, possibly merging with an existing selection.

See the Working with Selection section for more information.

Find All

This extremely powerful command locates all occurrences of specified pattern. The Find Dialog is used to specify the pattern to search for, as well as a number of additional options.

The result of the Find All operation is a multiple selection, which describes all pattern occurrences. Selection Details window may be used to browse results. In addition, message box with a total number of occurrences found is displayed when searching finishes.

If the pattern has not been found in a file, the message box is displayed.

See the Find All section for more information.

Replace All

This extremely powerful command can be used to locate all occurrences of one pattern and replace them to another pattern. The Find & Replace Dialog is used to specify both patterns, as well as a number of additional options. It is not required that the size of the search and replace patterns equals, in addition, the replace pattern may be empty. In the latter case, found pattern occurrences are removed from the document.

After all occurrences of the search pattern are found and replaced, the message box with a total number of occurrences is displayed. If there were no matches, the message box with "No matches" text is displayed.

Replace All command is always faster than a series of commands, such as Find All and Fill, or Find All and Delete. The latter command sequence is easily replaced with a Replace All command with empty replace pattern.

Replace All command, as most other commands, creates an operation in the operation history.

See the Replace All section for more information.

Base Converter

The Base Converter Tool Window provides you with a mechanism to convert numbers from one format into another.

The following formats and encodings are supported by the Base Converter:

Decimal
Hexadecimal
Octal
Binary
Float (single-precision floating-point number)
Double (double-precision floating-point number)
ASCII character
UNICODE character
EBCDIC character

Once you enter the value in one of the supported formats, it gets immediately converted into other compatible formats.

See the Base Converter Tool Window section for more information.

Data Inspector

Data Inspector Tool Window allows you to interpret the data under the cursor in several formats. As the cursor is moved, the window updates all its fields. In addition, it can be instructed to highlight the currently selected field in an editor window, thus showing you all the cells the highlighted value occupies in the document.

See the Data Inspector Tool Window section for more information.

Bookmarks

A bookmark is a stored location within a document. Bookmarks may be used to quickly navigate through the document.

Hex Editor supports creation of several bookmark groups. Each group holds an unlimited number of bookmarks. You can specify different coloring schemes for different bookmarks. The Bookmarks Tool Window is used to display and manage all bookmark groups and their properties.

See the Bookmarks Overview section for more information.

Technical Support

E-Mail and phone technical support is provided to registered users of Standard, Professional or Ultimate editions.

We provide only limited or no support for users of the Free Edition.

Built-In Explorer

Hex Editor provides two Windows Explorer-like windows as part of its user interface. They can be used to perform usual file and folder operations and also tightly coupled with Hex Editor. For example, you can open files in the editor by double-clicking them in the Explorer window simply dragging them to the editor's window.

Standard Edition unlocks the Built-In Explorer window. Professional Edition adds the second Explorer window to the user interface.

See the Built-In Explorer section for more information.

Encodings

Hex Editor is capable of displaying text in the text pane according to a selected encoding. More than 130 different encodings are supported (subject to installed code page files and fonts). When the cursor is in the text pane, typed characters are also converted using the selected encoding. Encoding can be set separately for each editor window. Different ANSI, UNICODE, ISO, OEM, MAC, EBCDIC and country-specific encodings are supported.

See the Encodings section for more information.

Advanced Copy & Export (Raw Text Format)

Selected document data may be converted into a number of supported text formats and placed into the Clipboard or exported to a file. Space-separated or comma-separated numbers, raw text with selected encoding, programming language array declaration, Base64, UUencode and Quoted-Printable are among supported formats.

Raw Text Format allows you to copy the selected data from the text pane "as it is". You also have an option to specify the text encoding (from the list of more than 150 encodings, including multi-byte).

See the Advanced Copy & Export section for more information.

Advanced Copy & Export (Formatted Data Format)

This powerful format allows you to convert a binary data to a sequence of numbers, encoded according to the selected type. You select a type of number, whether base 16 or base 10 is used to represent them, the number of numbers in a row and output type.

See the Advanced Copy & Export section for more information.

Pasting Text

Text may now be pasted into the editor. Depending on the active pane, the text is either pasted "as is" (if the text pane is active), or parsed as a sequence of hexadecimal or decimal integers (if the code pane is active).

See the Pasting Text section for more information.

Opening Volumes (Logical Disks)

Hex Editor Neo supports opening volumes (logical disks) for viewing and editing.

See the Opening Volumes section for more information.

Opening Process Memory

Hex Editor Neo allows you to open virtual memory of any running process for read-only or read-write access.

See the Opening Processes section for more information.

Opening Computer Physical Memory (RAM)

Hex Editor Neo provides a read-only view into the computer physical memory (RAM) - only on supported operating systems.

See the Opening RAM section for more information.

Data Encryption and Decryption

A whole document or a part of it may be encrypted and decrypted, using any installed block or stream cipher.

See the Encrypt and Decrypt sections for more information.

Data Operations

A large set of data operation (bitwise: NOT, OR, AND, XOR; arithmetic: Negation, Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication, Division, Remainder; and different shifts) are provided.

See the Data Operations section for more information.

Hex Editor Neo Features

The Hex Editor Neo offers the following functionality:

In-Depth Feature Tour