@Charles-Billow said:
I see how to change fonts etc. for the document I am working on, but how do I change the default font/size/ and zoom level as the default for all new documents?
The way you phrased that makes me think you might not understand what a text editor is. Text files are stored as the raw text: no individual text file / text-based-document has any concept of its own font or font-size. It is just text, and it is up to the text editor to decide what font or size to use. If you set Notepad++ to use a specific font or font-size, using the dialog that @markusbodensee shared with you, that will affect how Notepad++ displays it, but MS notepad.exe or VS Code or gvim will all use their own font and size, because it’s up to the app, not the file, what font and size to display text in.
If you’ve changed the font and size that’s used “in the current document” in Notepad++, you’ve changed the font and size for all documents, new or old, in Notepad++.
As far as Zoom level goes: Notepad++ remembers your previous zoom when you exit. But if you’ve set a reasonable font size as your default, then zoom should normally be at 100% (which is the default if you haven’t zoomed in or out yet). If you’re to the point that you start thinking you want to have the default zoom bigger or smaller than 100%, then think to yourself: do you really mean that you should change the font size bigger or smaller, instead? (Then again, some people are still killing trees from their text editor, so if you’re printing to paper, maybe you have one of the few use cases where it makes sense to use a smaller font but larger zoom, or vice versa.)