A quick & dirty workaround for point 2 might be to set a hot key to launch Find in Files instead of normal Find, then put the required “locked” filename into Filters box and it’s folder into Folder box.
Then each time you press the hotkey it will remember the last filter/folder… just enter your search term and click “Find All”. You will however have to click on the desired line in the “Find Results” window to switch to the “locked” file, but there after you can F3 or Ctrl-F as usual. (I actually use Find in Files as much as Find).

An alternative for point 1. might be to write your more complex macros in LuaScript or Python Script (both available in Plugin manager).
I don’t believe these have recording ability, but they do offer very powerful ways to automate almost anything in npp far above what you can do with the built in macros.
There are other scripting plugins as well such as C# but I have not used these.

Point 2 is actually an ideal example of something that could be implemented quickly in Python Script:
One script to choose which file to “lock for finding” (or just type this in the Python console)…
globals()[“mnFixedFindFilename”] = notepad.getCurrentFilename()

and the main script (bound to a hotkey of your choice):
notepad.activateFile(mnFixedFindFilename)
notepad.runMenuCommand(“Search”, “Find…”)

Trivial to modify above to hardcode the filename or even support multiple hotkeys pointing to different files!

@Martin:
A workaround I sometimes use that may help is to access the the “often changing files” over the network… npp only sees changes to files made locally!

@David:
I think the issue is that the “The file has been modified by another program” dialog pops up even if the modified file in question is not the active npp document - this certainly bugs the hell out of me :)

Typical scenario for me is having a log file and source file (that I am editing) open in npp…

I only want to be notified that the log file has been “modified by another program” when the log file is the active npp document (or next time I switch to the log file in npp).

I don’t use “Update silently” since it means the “Find results” links to lines in the silently updated files can get de-synced and point to the wrong place without any clue that the file is updated.

“Update silently” also does not really help in cases where I have edited the log file in npp (so the dialog again steals focus).

My suggestion:
I’m not sure a “per file follow” setting would be useful to me (and in fact care would be needed to manage which docs you were following and which not).

I think a 3rd “File Status Auto-Detection” preference would help:
☒ Enable
☒ Notify only when document is active
☒ Silent (notify only if document has been edited in npp)

Other related enhancements could be a visual indication that the file has been silently updated (perhaps ^ instead of the * you get for docs with unsaved changes). Similarly a per-line indication in the “Find results” windows for lines in the silently updated file.

I too would like to see a UWP app for use on both desktop and mobile. All with great integration with OneDrive. I have been hoping for this since WP7 being able to update code on the fly would be fantastic.

Thanks for the response, I checked the right click/restore previous versions options which is what I think you’re referring too? But it says at the top ‘previous versions from file history or restore points’ and then below that ‘there are no previous versions available’
I’ll have to google how to configure that for foture protection, but either way it was one of the few files I for some reason just had on my desktop directly vs in dropbox which is a mistake I won’t make again…I’ll at least put it in drop and make a shortcut to my desktop…

I just checked my dropbox backup folder and it only has two text files in there, one from few days ago and one I was just editing a few minutes ago…not sure why the file, or any other text file, since it is set to periodically backup every 7 seconds by the way it looks…is in there. But I changed the backup settings to back up to another backup folder in dropbox upon save, which may be redundant.

@Claudia-Frank said:

@Justin-Hess

could be, depends how your windows/notepad++ has been configured.
Windows supports copies by using vss (??) service - means if you can right click
on the file there should be a tab which provides access to a previous version.
If you don’t see that tab, you don’t have configured it.

Notepad++ has also some kind of functionality - backups.
If this has been set you could check the backup directory and see if your file has been
backed up.

Cheers
Claudia

Just saw it, thanks.