@PeterJones Thanks. Changing the rendering mode to GDI, DirectWrite (retain frames), or DirectWrite (Draw to GDI DC) seems to stop the issue.

Here’s the debug info:
Notepad++ v8.9.1 (ARM 64-bit)
Build time: Jan 18 2026 - 21:12:46
Scintilla/Lexilla included: 5.5.8/5.4.6
Boost Regex included: 1_90
pugixml included: 1.15
nlohmann JSON included: 3.12.0
Path: C:\Program Files\Notepad++\notepad++.exe
Command Line:
Admin mode: OFF
Local Conf mode: OFF
Cloud Config: OFF
Periodic Backup: ON
Placeholders: OFF
Scintilla Rendering Mode: SC_TECHNOLOGY_DEFAULT (0)
Multi-instance Mode: monoInst
asNotepad: OFF
File Status Auto-Detection: cdEnabledNew (for current file/tab only)
Dark Mode: OFF
Display Info:
primary monitor: 2304x1536, scaling 150%
visible monitors count: 1
installed Display Class adapters:
0000: Description - Qualcomm® Adreno™ X1-85 GPU
0000: DriverVersion - 31.0.133.2
OS Name: Windows 11 Pro (64-bit)
OS Version: 25H2
OS Build: 26200.7628
Current ANSI codepage: 1252
Plugins:
mimeTools (3.1)
NppConverter (4.7)
NppExport (0.4)

Hi, , @russ-jones, @freemeow, @m-andre-z-eckenrode and All,

Ah… many thanks, @m-andre-z-eckenrode for your valuable input ! Thus, @russ-jones, my macros can be improved as below, just adding a final Esc key stroke :

<Macro name="End Previous NON-Blank chars" Ctrl="no" Alt="yes" Shift="no" Key="190"> <Action type="3" message="1700" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" /> <Action type="3" message="1601" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="\S+\K(?=\s)" /> <Action type="3" message="1625" wParam="0" lParam="2" sParam="" /> <Action type="3" message="1602" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" /> <Action type="3" message="1702" wParam="0" lParam="256" sParam="" /> <Action type="3" message="1701" wParam="0" lParam="1" sParam="" /> <Action type="0" message="2325" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" /> </Macro> <Macro name="End Next NON-Blank chars" Ctrl="no" Alt="yes" Shift="no" Key="191"> <Action type="3" message="1700" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" /> <Action type="3" message="1601" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="\S+\K(?=\s)" /> <Action type="3" message="1625" wParam="0" lParam="2" sParam="" /> <Action type="3" message="1602" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" /> <Action type="3" message="1702" wParam="0" lParam="768" sParam="" /> <Action type="3" message="1701" wParam="0" lParam="1" sParam="" /> <Action type="0" message="2325" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" /> </Macro>

BR

guy038

@Pierre-de-la-Verre said in No solution for using as Preview Handler?:

I looked around and it seems that there is no (common) way to activate / to configure the “Preview Pane” in Windows Explorer on “Win Server 2019” to display common files like logs, txts and so on.

Notepad++ doesn’t have a preview pane natively. Are you using one or more plugins? If so, which plugin(s)?

Or are you saying that you would like to tell Windows OS to use Notepad++ as the preview tool for those kinds of files? My guess is that would require that Notepad++ add hooks to handle whatever special message Windows sends to request generating the preview. Yeah, I found this 2019 feature request that requested adding such a feature. You could go upvote that request… Also, there’s a discussion from 2021 about the possibility of this feature, as well.

(On Github I found a fork which offers this, but I would like to prefer a solution with / within the “official version of NotePad++”)

I couldn’t find that fork easily. If you pointed a link to that fork in the official feature request issue, it might give a volunteer the context and information needed to be able to try to incorporate it into Notepad++.

@PeterJones thanks a lot… I was not able to find that myself :-)

The Open With extension is not the Edit with Notepad++ extension. The later is NppShell.

Open a cmd prompt and enter:

reg delete "HKCU\Software\Classes\Applications\notepad++.exe"

Press Return key and if no error, then it will prompt to delete the key and reply with yes.

Open With creates this key and some others. Removing this key removes the orphaned Open With entry of Notepad++.

Some installers add this key, the Notepad++ installer currently does not add this key so it does not remove it on uninstall.

The duplicate entry is something else. Try:

reg query "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.ini" /s

and will print information about the entries to discover more details about the entries. You may see something like Applications\other.exe and if another ophaned entry, can use a similar command to remove it:

reg delete "HKCU\Software\Classes\Applications\other.exe"

Always use care with the registry. Ensure the commands are correct before executing them.

@mpheath Cheers thank you for the detailed explanation! i will give this a go.

@Omar-A ,

Search has a “regular expression” mode which will be able to search for anything matching a pattern. Since I assume you want to also delete the matching </span> to go with it, then I believe a regex like the following will work:
FIND = <span data-path-to-node[^>]*>(.*?)</span>
REPLACE = $1
SEARCH MODE = Regular Expression

That worked on the first three spans in your example (and would’ve worked on the fourth if the final /span> wasn’t missing the <)

@Alan-Kilborn

Thanks for the suggestion, though I think .lineUp() is sufficient for my purposes in this case, since I will need to repeatedly go up the same number of lines, and column isn’t a concern because I’ll always be landing on blank lines.

A very old thread I know, but this may help someone else.

I was trying to use Pretty Print to format some MSOffice XML (from a PPT template that had been renamed as a zip). My initial attempts didn’t work “Nothing happened”. I eventually solved the problem when I realised that it wouldn’t work on files still stored in the zip. Notepad++ could read the files and displayed them as 2 looooog lines so I assumed (wrongly) that I could Preetify, edit and write back. In retrospect I should have realised that this was never going to work as the “file” I was working on was a temporary copy.

Solution: Extract the file from the zip (as opposed to view the file in the zip without extracting properly) , Preetify (which worked of course), edit, save, copy back into the zip overwriting the original.

An interesting corollary: Using the Windows Explorer zip functionality to open and view the contents (as opposed to extracting them) which uses a rather long temporary folder prefix - Pretty Print didn’t work.
Using 7Zip which uses a much shorter temporary folder prefix - Pretty Print did work. Obviously, I was still working in a temporary copy which wouldn’t get saved back.

@mpheath. Thank you so much. You found a simple and very effective solution. It works 100 percent. Now I see the desired cursor instead of the black square. Thanks again.

@Chec-Pufos ,

Your specs are more vague than you think they are.

Assuming you want to replace any positive integer immediately after that specific I:max= with 987 and any positive integer immediately after that specific I:min= with 654, then it could be done with something like:
FIND = (?-is)(Size\s+{\s*.*\R\s*I:max=)\d+(\s*.*\R\s*I:min=)\d+
REPLACE = ${1}987${2}654
SEARCH MODE = Regular Expression
REPLACE IN FILES

hopefully, you can figure out what to change in order to replace with values other than 987 or 654

highly recommended: always back up your data before trying a regex that someone hands you; always try a new regex on a single file and make sure it behaves as you expect before trying on the full 30 files.

----

Useful References Please Read Before Posting Template for Search/Replace Questions Formatting Forum Posts Notepad++ Online User Manual: Searching/Regex FAQ: Where to find other regular expressions (regex) documentation

@PeterJones I am happy :)

@h-jangra said in Feature Request / Question: Soft Wrap at Vertical Edge (Column 80) regardless of window size:

I have added this in NppVim plugin [. . .]I am not sure how to set text width in notepad++

That’s interesting! I’d think that a NP++ plugin can only do things that are also possible in NP++ itself since the underlying engine is the same.

@Cam-K said in How do I change font?:

Noticed on newer versions of N++ that the “Enable global font” option is gone

It’s not gone, just at the bottom of the list, because it’s not what most people should be using. See the global override dialog and the user manual for more on why you shouldn’t use it.

@PeterJones Ok, Thank you. I see now Microsoft Excel is the way to go!

@guy038

https://www.scintilla.org/ScintillaDoc.html#SCI_COPY

copying data to the clipboard

Is document to the clipboard.

https://www.scintilla.org/ScintillaDoc.html#SCI_PASTE

pasting from the clipboard into the document

Is clipboard to the document.

Both functions relate to the document in the editor. The copy function will be good for the task though paste will not work with the search window.

Instead of SCI_PASTE, could use the Run command to run an executable to insert the clipboard text into the search window.

AutoIt3 script automate_columns++_search.au3 :

; Wait up to 3 seconds for the window. $hSearch = WinWait('Search in indicated region', '', 3) If $hSearch Then $sClip = ClipGet() ; get clipboard text ControlSetText($hSearch, '', 'Edit1', $sClip) ; set combo edit ControlClick($hSearch, '', 'Button7') ; click regex button ControlClick($hSearch, '', 'Button9') ; click count button $sCount = ControlGetText($hSearch, '', 'Static3') ; read label ClipPut($sCount) ; set clipboard text EndIf

Adjust the title if the window text is localized.

Compile to executable and then add to Run as a command. Get the command id with NppUISpy and insert into the shortcuts.xml file.