@ILoveSkilledCoders said: Unfortunately I don’t understand some of what you said. I am sorry. I thought that explaining to go someplace in Windows explorer and rename files would be easy enough to understand. I cannot make it easier to understand than that. I’m trying to find someone to help explain it to me. & I don’t know what you didn’t understand, so I cannot explain more. to edit those files b/c I don’t want to screw things up & make it worse. I didn’t say to edit any files. I said to rename/copy files. I have no idea if I was in admin mode when I updated. That’s unfortunate. … someone told me you came out with the numbers that tell us how many search results there are, … & then which number result we are on after we press “enter.” I need that so I got excited & updated. Unfortunately it’s not in the Ctrl F search window as I found out. That’s with Search > Inremental Search which brings up the Incremental Search Bar at the bottom of the screen. That’s a simplified version of the search which has always been there, but recently the “live count” was added to the Incremental Search I think I learned years ago that you have to click on Ctrl S at least once to save each file, Each time you hit Ctrl+S on a file, it saves it. That’s the only time that Notepad++ saves it to the given directory. If you only hit Ctrl+S on each file once, then it only saved it once in that directory. The “session snapshot and periodic backup” feature of Notepad++ does not save the file to the normal location. It saves it to the backup directory which I referenced before. In the future: If you want to automatically save your updated/edited files without hitting Ctrl+S or File > Save or the Save or Save All button on the toolbar, you would need to install and configure the AutoSave plugin, as described in the FAQ I linked you to. If you don’t want to install and configure that plugin, then you will have to learn to Save your files on your own. but I had them all saved at one point, otherwise they wouldn’t have been in that Notepad++ folder, so I have no idea what happened. You saved them once, and only once. Never again. That’s what happened. On another note, off & on since the update, I keep getting this error, & then there’s another question after this one which I forgot to take a SS of. https://nimb.ws/i9V1zXa Just paste the image into your post: you don’t need to upload it to a service. [image: 1785784094594-115d78d2-de07-43ff-a056-e06450858f4d-image.jpeg] That means some other program had updated Links.txt since the time you opened it in Notepad++. Your choices are to say “YES”, which will read the copy from disk, and get rid of all your edits, or to say “NO” and overwrite whatever is on disk with what’s currently visible in Notepad++. Which choice is right depends on your computer, and we cannot tell you which is right for you to choose. Also, when I click on Ctrl. F, most of the time it doesn’t highlight & place my cursor in the text field so I can type a new keyword. I had no problems with the other one. That’s controlled on Settings > Preferences > Searching, with the Fill Find Field with Selected Text checkbox and the Max Characters to Auto-Fill... number field. Going back to your original problem: you have probably opened and closed Notepad++ too many times for my file-rename procedure to be of any help. So ignore that part for now. Instead, you will need to open your Windows Explorer (WinKey + E – I believe that worked even back in Win7 days), and then paste %AppData%\Notepad++\backup into the Location Bar of the Explorer window. If your Win7 doesn’t show the explorer bar, then you will have to manually go to C:\users\<user name>\AppData\Roaming\Notepad++\backup\ in Windows Explorer. In that directory, there may or may not be a bunch of files with names similar to filename.ext@yyyy-mm-dd_hhmmss, where filename.ext is the name of the real file, and the yyyy-mm-dd_hhmmss is a timestamp that Notepad++ used. If you have a bunch of those, you can copy those to some safe, temporary directory, and then open all those copies in Notepad++. Look through them, If any of them have the data you want for your real files, then save them to the correct filename in D:\Notes\Notepad++. Close any of them you don’t want. Leave the ones open that you saved to D:\Notes\Notepad++. In the future, either use Ctrl+S (or the menu or toolbar equivalent) to save the file when you’ve made an important change, or set up the AutoSave plugin to save your files for you. If you have difficulty setting up AutoSave after reading the FAQ, please let us know which step of the FAQ you are on and having difficulty with. But I’m not going to type step-by-step instructions for you here, because those instructions are already in the FAQ, and it would be a waste of everyone’s time for it to be typed again here.

@PeterJones ok man Thank you, the method worked.

I found a plugin that solves this problem. https://github.com/numbereleven-a/NotepadPP_AltShiftMenuFix

@PeterJones said: @Kiichiro-Matsushita, welcome to the Notepad++ Community. You said: I tried tinkering with the Style Configurator, to no avail… You don’t tell us which theme you are starting with. You don’t tell us what you tried in the Style Configurator. One would think if you really wanted help, you would give us more to work with. That said, I will give the following advice: How do I change those? Using Style Configurator, after you’ve set your theme, you can choose the Global Styles in the first column, and choose the Current Line Background settings (second column) to change the “you are on this line” highlight; for “you have selected this text”, you need to edit the Selected Text Color (again, second column). Please note for these two settings, Style Configurator only pays attention to Background Color – the foreground color and bold/italic/underline settings are ignored. … Good luck. I had the same issue, this answer worked! Appreciate your time & input

I already made my debug info available in my first post in this topic, which clearly indicated that I’m using an installed x86 version of NPP. I am sorry I didn’t remember that from a week ago. And “multiple instances” can have different meanings to different people. Even if I had remembered you were using installed, that doesn’t mean that you weren’t also using a portable: not everyone would think to mention such a thing – they might not even think about it, when using their multiple installations/portables next to each other. (I have my daily as Installed, but I also have multiple active portables that use different configurations). I just needed to make sure, because different setups could have vastly different reasons for the symptoms you describe. I normally run NPP the first time after a restart via either its shortcut in my taskbar or the start menu. Any second instance is normally opened with command line options -multiInst -nosession (via AutoHotkey keyboard shortcut), and I always exit it before exiting the primary instance. In theory then, the validate from the main instance should get saved. After you validated, did you exit before running again and spawning multiple instances? Because Notepad++ doesn’t save the new copy of the config file (with the new validation HMAC code) until it exits. So if you ran the main, ran validate, then spawned new instances, the HMAC code might not have propagated to the new instances I don’t know whether N++ gives a copy of the current config structure from memory to the new process, or whether the new process is completely separate, in which case, it would have read the old version from the disk again – re-reading, since you are doing notepad++.exe -multiInst -nosession via AHK (ie, outside N++, instead of using the “Clone to New Instance” command from inside Notepad++), it would have no way of propagating that HMAC to the new instance, because it hasn’t written it to the config.xml yet, so when the new instance reads config.xml, it is out-of-date. A few hours ago, just before I posted my last reply, I was consistently able to replicate NPP’s demand that I re-validate when trying to run my macro. Now, I can’t. No idea why. I am wondering if you finally had a sequence where you did the validate, then exited so it saved the right HMAC, and now everything is settled. I hope so (and believe so). Stay tuned. If it comes back, I’ll be sure to make a note of the exact sequence and post again. Based on my experiments (below), which are 100% repeatable for me, now that the HMAC has been properly saved, it shouldn’t prompt you again until you manually edit the shortcuts file. My Steps to Confirm: create example.pyfrom Npp import notepad notepad.runMenuCommand("Macro", "Trim Trailing Space and Save") exit all Notepad++ use notepad.exe to edit config.xml and remove the line with name=“shortcutsXmlHMAC” (which causes it to be not-yet-validated), and save launch main copy of Notepad++ Run > validate shortcuts.xml open a new instance of N++ with -multiInst -nosession Plugins > PythonScript > scripts > example → it will pop up the shortcuts.xml file and the validation warning messagebox please note: this doesn’t require you to use the keyboard shortcut; just that you run a scrpt that tries to run a macro or run-menu command, as far as I can tell – my experiments have not been using an assigned keystroke to run the script. exit the second instance exit the first instance (which should save the config.xml with validated HMAC) launch main copy of Notepad++ open a new instance of N++ with -multiInst -nosession Plugins > PythonScript > scripts > example → it will not pop up the shortcuts.xml file or the validation warning messagebox, because it’s valid So, I guess the clarified version: if you are using multiple instances, close all intstances but one, look at shortcuts.xml to make sure all the macros and run-menu commands are as you expect them to be, then Run > validate shortcuts.xml, then exit Notepad++ to get it to save that. From now on, you shouldn’t need to validate again unless you intentionally manually edit shortcuts.xml. (Using Shortcut Mapper or saving new macros or run menu commands should not trigger a re-validate, because Notepad++ should update the HMAC when it changes the shortcuts.xml itself) update: PR 889 is adding a NOTE to that effect in the shortcuts.xml security section – you may have to refresh your browser to see it.

@guy038 has given a good example here also: https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/topic/27611/is-there-a-way-to-find-both-alphabets-with-and-without-accents-at-the-same-time-when-searching

Hello, @troglo37, @coises, @peterjones, @dr-ramaanand and All, Préamble : @troglo37, on demand of @dr-ramaanand, I changed your initial title : Is There A Way To Ignore Letters With Accents When Searching? by this new title, which seems more acurrate : Is there a way to find both alphabets, with and without accents, at the same time, when searching? Thank you, @dr-ramaanand, for reminding me of this interesting post, which uses a more general, but more accurate, definition of accented characters ! Indeed, an accented character , let’s say the é character, may be described as : The character é LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH ACUTE, of Unicode value 00E9 The character e LATIN SMALL LETTER E, of Unicode value 0065, followed with the character  ́   COMBINING ACUTE ACCENT, of Unicode value 0301 Note that, in this second form, the letter e is the main character of an \X sequence and the accent(s), coming next, are the subsequent chars of this \X sequence ! So, the macro, described in my previous post, should be changed as : <Macro name="Global Search" Ctrl="no" Alt="no" Shift="no" Key="0"> <Action type="3" message="1700" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" /> <Action type="3" message="1601" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="(?=\X)(.)|(?!\X)." /> <Action type="3" message="1625" wParam="0" lParam="2" sParam="" /> <Action type="3" message="1602" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="(?1\(\?=[[=$1=]]\)\\X)" /> <Action type="3" message="1702" wParam="0" lParam="640" sParam="" /> <Action type="3" message="1701" wParam="0" lParam="1609" sParam="" /> </Macro> And it means that : If the current character found is a single character OR the main character of a current \X sequence, it must be replaced with the string (?=[[=$1=]])\X, where $1 represents the current char If the current character found is an subsequent character of the current \X sequence, thus an accent, it must just be deleted as its main character has been previously taken in account So, let’s consider the following French text, pasted in a new tab : C'est là, près de la forêt, dans un gîte, où régnait un grand capharnaüm, que l'aïeul ôta sa flûte et son bâton de son canoë C'est là, près de la forêt, dans un gîte, où régnait un grand capharnaüm, que l'aïeul ôta sa flûte et son bâton de son canoë Note that, within the first line, the accented characters are single chars whereas, within the second line, the accentued chars are unaccented vowels followed with an accent character If we apply our modified Global Search macro against a copy of the first line of this new tab, we get this regex : (?=[[=C=]])\X(?=[[='=]])\X(?=[[=e=]])\X(?=[[=s=]])\X(?=[[=t=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=l=]])\X(?=[[=à=]])\X(?=[[=,=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=p=]])\X(?=[[=r=]])\X(?=[[=è=]])\X(?=[[=s=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=d=]])\X(?=[[=e=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=l=]])\X(?=[[=a=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=f=]])\X(?=[[=o=]])\X(?=[[=r=]])\X(?=[[=ê=]])\X(?=[[=t=]])\X(?=[[=,=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=d=]])\X(?=[[=a=]])\X(?=[[=n=]])\X(?=[[=s=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=u=]])\X(?=[[=n=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=g=]])\X(?=[[=î=]])\X(?=[[=t=]])\X(?=[[=e=]])\X(?=[[=,=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=o=]])\X(?=[[=ù=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=r=]])\X(?=[[=é=]])\X(?=[[=g=]])\X(?=[[=n=]])\X(?=[[=a=]])\X(?=[[=i=]])\X(?=[[=t=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=u=]])\X(?=[[=n=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=g=]])\X(?=[[=r=]])\X(?=[[=a=]])\X(?=[[=n=]])\X(?=[[=d=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=c=]])\X(?=[[=a=]])\X(?=[[=p=]])\X(?=[[=h=]])\X(?=[[=a=]])\X(?=[[=r=]])\X(?=[[=n=]])\X(?=[[=a=]])\X(?=[[=ü=]])\X(?=[[=m=]])\X(?=[[=,=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=q=]])\X(?=[[=u=]])\X(?=[[=e=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=l=]])\X(?=[[='=]])\X(?=[[=a=]])\X(?=[[=ï=]])\X(?=[[=e=]])\X(?=[[=u=]])\X(?=[[=l=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=ô=]])\X(?=[[=t=]])\X(?=[[=a=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=s=]])\X(?=[[=a=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=f=]])\X(?=[[=l=]])\X(?=[[=û=]])\X(?=[[=t=]])\X(?=[[=e=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=e=]])\X(?=[[=t=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=s=]])\X(?=[[=o=]])\X(?=[[=n=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=b=]])\X(?=[[=â=]])\X(?=[[=t=]])\X(?=[[=o=]])\X(?=[[=n=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=d=]])\X(?=[[=e=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=s=]])\X(?=[[=o=]])\X(?=[[=n=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=c=]])\X(?=[[=a=]])\X(?=[[=n=]])\X(?=[[=o=]])\X(?=[[=ë=]])\X Which does match the two lines of the new tab ! And if we apply our Global Search macro against a copy of the second line of this new tab, we get this regex : (?=[[=C=]])\X(?=[[='=]])\X(?=[[=e=]])\X(?=[[=s=]])\X(?=[[=t=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=l=]])\X(?=[[=a=]])\X(?=[[=,=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=p=]])\X(?=[[=r=]])\X(?=[[=e=]])\X(?=[[=s=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=d=]])\X(?=[[=e=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=l=]])\X(?=[[=a=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=f=]])\X(?=[[=o=]])\X(?=[[=r=]])\X(?=[[=e=]])\X(?=[[=t=]])\X(?=[[=,=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=d=]])\X(?=[[=a=]])\X(?=[[=n=]])\X(?=[[=s=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=u=]])\X(?=[[=n=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=g=]])\X(?=[[=i=]])\X(?=[[=t=]])\X(?=[[=e=]])\X(?=[[=,=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=o=]])\X(?=[[=ù=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=r=]])\X(?=[[=e=]])\X(?=[[=g=]])\X(?=[[=n=]])\X(?=[[=a=]])\X(?=[[=i=]])\X(?=[[=t=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=u=]])\X(?=[[=n=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=g=]])\X(?=[[=r=]])\X(?=[[=a=]])\X(?=[[=n=]])\X(?=[[=d=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=c=]])\X(?=[[=a=]])\X(?=[[=p=]])\X(?=[[=h=]])\X(?=[[=a=]])\X(?=[[=r=]])\X(?=[[=n=]])\X(?=[[=a=]])\X(?=[[=u=]])\X(?=[[=m=]])\X(?=[[=,=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=q=]])\X(?=[[=u=]])\X(?=[[=e=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=l=]])\X(?=[[='=]])\X(?=[[=a=]])\X(?=[[=i=]])\X(?=[[=e=]])\X(?=[[=u=]])\X(?=[[=l=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=o=]])\X(?=[[=t=]])\X(?=[[=a=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=s=]])\X(?=[[=a=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=f=]])\X(?=[[=l=]])\X(?=[[=u=]])\X(?=[[=t=]])\X(?=[[=e=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=e=]])\X(?=[[=t=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=s=]])\X(?=[[=o=]])\X(?=[[=n=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=b=]])\X(?=[[=a=]])\X(?=[[=t=]])\X(?=[[=o=]])\X(?=[[=n=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=d=]])\X(?=[[=e=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=s=]])\X(?=[[=o=]])\X(?=[[=n=]])\X(?=[[= =]])\X(?=[[=c=]])\X(?=[[=a=]])\X(?=[[=n=]])\X(?=[[=o=]])\X(?=[[=e=]])\X Which does match, also, the two lines of the new tab ! In conclusion, this method allows you to search for a stream selection of characters, regardless of the syntax of the accented characters within that selection ! Best Regards, guy038

User Manual has been updated: Renamed header to “shortcuts.xml Security” and includes mention of Macros as well: https://npp-user-manual.org/docs/config-files/#shortcutsxml-security added Macros Security on the macros page: https://npp-user-manual.org/docs/macros/#macro-security added a paragraph linking to the “shortcuts.xml Security” page in the Running External Commands page: https://npp-user-manual.org/docs/run-menu/#security-is-your-responsibility

@PeterJones I was looking at style for CDATA instead of SGML, so that explains it. Thanks a lot for the help!!

@Elayne-T , Do you have your ?-menu’s Debug Info? Do you have plugins in Notepad++ that might be doing something in the background? (Maybe a plugin has popped up a dialog, but because they didn’t code it right, the dialog doesn’t go in fron of Notepad++'s always-in-front.) Do you have a file open that requires Admin privileges to write/save? If so, maybe Windows has popped up the UAC, but it didn’t get to take your full screen like it normally would (the UAC shield icon would be on your taskbar if it’s an issue with the UAC) Do you have anything other than Notepad++ and your browser running? Do you have any applications like AutoHotKey, which assign global hotkeys that maybe it’s interpreting some sequence of keystrokes you are using to Does your browser have any extensions/plugins that might be trying to steal focus away from Notepad++? It will be easier to replicate and find if you give as many details and pieces of relevant information as possible, otherwise something as nebulous an unrepeatable as this is going to be difficult to find. update: one more idea: in the older posts, they mentioned that they’d click in Notepad++ to activate, then after a few seconds of typing, the focus would be lost. Is that the case for you? If so, did you leave the mouse pointer somewhere over the Notepad++ window when you started typing? Or does the mouse pointer start drifting off accidentally (maybe you bumped the mouse while typing, or it gets shaken while you type fervently)? Or does the mouse pointer get moved off intentionally (for example, when I was experimenting with always-on-top, I would move the mouse pointer back over the Chrome window, then use the scrollwheel to scroll the browser tab without clicking in the browser). If your mouse pointer is back to being over the browser (or some third app), maybe something in that other app grabs focus when you leave your mouse lingering over it (I know that some linux GUI will give apps focus whenever the cursor hovers over them, even if they haven’t been clicked to the foreground… maybe some other app – your browser or something else – has given itself such a feature, even on Windows.)

@Coises said: What is really means is, when Notepad++ opens an existing file that contains only ASCII characters, it should treat it as UTF-8 rather than as ANSI. Yeah, so for example: “Treat ASCII-only files as UTF-8 (instead of ANSI)” or something similar could be a more clear wording for the option. Which, for me, raises the question: Why is this only available when UTF-8 is the default encoding for new files? It would add a bit more flexibility to the user, but on the other side it seems very unlikely to set this option if you don’t want UTF-8 as default. So I guess it could be a preventative measure that the user doesn’t set any confusing options.

because it appears those actually return from the enum UniMode, which is enum UniMode {uni8Bit=0, uniUTF8=1, uni16BE=2, uni16LE=3, uniCookie=4, uni7Bit=5, uni16BE_NoBOM=6, uni16LE_NoBOM=7, uniEnd}; according to the source code. In N++ commit 8149f72 in v8.8.8 (Nov 2025), uniCookie has been renamed as uniUTF8_NoBOM inside the N++ source. Thus, I just put in PythonScript Issue #421 to request that there’s a BUFFERENCODING.UTF8_NOBOM, either as replacement or alias of the old meaninglessly-named BUFFERENCODING.COOKIE … I don’t know if it will happen, but at least the request is in. :-)

@guy038 Merci beaucoup!

@PeterJones Perfect thank you very much!

The Python script I posted is expected to handle single byte errors from UTF8 decoding. Asian languages can be 2 byte for ANSI and so the script may need to get the following byte too to decode both bytes properly. Probably will not find recovery tools and the like that will fix mixed encoding errors as the solution in some cases might be worse then the problem though in this case tested OK. Once saved, then there might be no going back and so creating a backup before the operation would be wise. Inspect the results to confirm is OK.

@Sylvester-Bullitt , Release Candidate is available. You probably want to test this version, and report any continued problems with the Open File feature ASAP.

@PeterJones Worked perfectly, thank you.

@Mario-Lemelin , everything work fine except for the equations in latex Not all Markdown processors understand LaTeX. (For example, the Markdown processor for this forum does not.) It appears that MarkdownViewer++ does not have that feature (which doesn’t surprise me). I visited this site (https://github.com/npp-plugins/plugintemplate) but was unablew to find help. That site is just the repository for the C++ template for creating a plugin. It’s not going to have information on how to use any specific plugin. The home for MarkdownViewer++ is https://github.com/nea/MarkdownViewerPlusPlus , so that’s where you’d have to go. But the author has recently set the repo to “read only”, indicating that they are unwilling to support that plugin any more. However, there are other Markdown plugins available from Plugins Admin. I’ve never used them, but two I see include NppMarkdownPanel @ https://github.com/mohzy83/NppMarkdownPanel AnotherMarkdown @ https://github.com/ezyuzin/NppAnotherMarkdown this appears to be a fork of NppMarkdownPanel with a different feature set. when I look at its README, it mentions the ability to use katex for math (I think it’s an option that you’d have to enable by editing a config file for the plugin; you’d want to experiment and read the documentation for that plugin to be sure) – and a quick look at the katex description implies to me that it’s essentially LaTeX compatible syntax. You can install either of those from the Plugins Admin interface. It may be that one of those will do what you need (my bet would be on the second as your best chance).