What version of Windows and Windows Notepad are you using? In my experience (and I just confirmed it), Windows 7 Professional Notepad (about notepad: MSWin 7 Pro, v6.1 (7601: SP1)) does not do what you describe:

If I select a portion of my text (as you showed in the screenshot) and select Format > Font > Bold Oblique, the whole document changes to Bold Oblique. Moreover, if I save then exit notepad, then open a new blank notepad document, and start typing, the new document is also in Bold Oblique. If I go to Format > Font > Normal, and open my saved document, the document I saved as Bold Oblique is no longer Bold Oblique. In other words, it behaves exactly as Notepad++'s Style Configurator > Global Styles > Default Style > font selection.

Notepad and Notepad++ are both, at the core, plain-text editors. NPP has the benefit (inherited from it’s core Scintilla) that it can run a syntax lexer, and apply formatting based on that lexing; you can also use other plugins for NPP that allow further highlighting or processing of the text file; these features make it exceedingly useful for coding, and other similar tasks. Plane old notepad can just edit the text – you can define the default presentation of the whole text inside notepad, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s a plain text file, and all will be rendered the same. (Note: I haven’t used Win8’s or Win10’s Notepad, so they may have added features, but it would surprise me if they saved on-the-fly formatting in the text file and still called themselves Notepad.)

If you want on-the-fly markup in Notepad++, you’ll need to pick one of NPP’s builtin Language syntax highlighters, or create a User Defined Language. I’ve got a simplistic UDL defintion for Markdown; I’ve also seen mention on the forum about TODO syntax highlighters (search the forum for TODO, I think). To copy my UDL definition, save the XML below as a file, then use Notepad++ and Language > Define Your Language > Import, and select the file, and restart NPP. If I then edit a file that ends in .md or .markdown, or if I manually select Language > Markdown, it does a simplistic inline-rendering of the markdown. If I want a more detailed rendering of the Markdown, I use PreviewHTML to render the Markdown into a new pane in NPP. See more details about markdown and the rendering at the following links:

Offical Markdown Syntax Quick Version of my PreviewHTML -> Markdown Long Version @nea’s plugin

(I haven’t tried @nea’s plugin, since my setup works okay for me… but NPP doesn’t play well with PreviewHTML – it moves it to the disabled plugins on every upgrade of NPP – so you might want to start with @nea’s plugin instead. I don’t know what all it does – you might not even need my UDL – but I remembered noting that the description sounded useful)

<NotepadPlus> <UserLang name="Markdown" ext="md markdown" udlVersion="2.1"> <Settings> <Global caseIgnored="yes" allowFoldOfComments="no" foldCompact="no" forcePureLC="0" decimalSeparator="0" /> <Prefix Keywords1="yes" Keywords2="yes" Keywords3="yes" Keywords4="yes" Keywords5="yes" Keywords6="no" Keywords7="no" Keywords8="no" /> </Settings> <KeywordLists> <Keywords name="Comments">00# 01 02 03&lt;!-- 04--&gt;</Keywords> <Keywords name="Numbers, prefix1"></Keywords> <Keywords name="Numbers, prefix2">#</Keywords> <Keywords name="Numbers, extras1">A B C D E F a b c d e f</Keywords> <Keywords name="Numbers, extras2"></Keywords> <Keywords name="Numbers, suffix1"></Keywords> <Keywords name="Numbers, suffix2"></Keywords> <Keywords name="Numbers, range"></Keywords> <Keywords name="Operators1"></Keywords> <Keywords name="Operators2">* - + &gt;</Keywords> <Keywords name="Folders in code1, open"></Keywords> <Keywords name="Folders in code1, middle"></Keywords> <Keywords name="Folders in code1, close"></Keywords> <Keywords name="Folders in code2, open"></Keywords> <Keywords name="Folders in code2, middle"></Keywords> <Keywords name="Folders in code2, close"></Keywords> <Keywords name="Folders in comment, open"></Keywords> <Keywords name="Folders in comment, middle"></Keywords> <Keywords name="Folders in comment, close"></Keywords> <Keywords name="Keywords1">http:// (http:// https:// (https:// (/ / file:// (file://</Keywords> <Keywords name="Keywords2">==== ----</Keywords> <Keywords name="Keywords3">*** ___</Keywords> <Keywords name="Keywords4">** __</Keywords> <Keywords name="Keywords5">* _</Keywords> <Keywords name="Keywords6"></Keywords> <Keywords name="Keywords7"></Keywords> <Keywords name="Keywords8"></Keywords> <Keywords name="Delimiters">00[ 01 02] 03` 04 05` 06&lt; 07 08&gt; 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23</Keywords> </KeywordLists> <Styles> <WordsStyle name="DEFAULT" fgColor="333333" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="" fontStyle="0" nesting="0" /> <WordsStyle name="COMMENTS" fgColor="008000" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="" fontStyle="0" nesting="0" /> <WordsStyle name="LINE COMMENTS" fgColor="FF8040" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="" fontStyle="1" nesting="67108864" /> <WordsStyle name="NUMBERS" fgColor="0000FF" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="" fontStyle="0" nesting="0" /> <WordsStyle name="KEYWORDS1" fgColor="408080" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="" fontStyle="4" nesting="0" /> <WordsStyle name="KEYWORDS2" fgColor="FF8080" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="" fontStyle="1" nesting="0" /> <WordsStyle name="KEYWORDS3" fgColor="000080" bgColor="FFFFA0" fontName="" fontStyle="3" nesting="0" /> <WordsStyle name="KEYWORDS4" fgColor="400080" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="" fontStyle="1" nesting="0" /> <WordsStyle name="KEYWORDS5" fgColor="000080" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="" fontStyle="2" nesting="0" /> <WordsStyle name="KEYWORDS6" fgColor="000000" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="" fontStyle="0" nesting="0" /> <WordsStyle name="KEYWORDS7" fgColor="000000" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="" fontStyle="0" nesting="0" /> <WordsStyle name="KEYWORDS8" fgColor="000000" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="" fontStyle="0" nesting="0" /> <WordsStyle name="OPERATORS" fgColor="0000FF" bgColor="FFFF00" fontName="" fontStyle="1" nesting="0" /> <WordsStyle name="FOLDER IN CODE1" fgColor="000000" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="" fontStyle="0" nesting="0" /> <WordsStyle name="FOLDER IN CODE2" fgColor="000000" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="" fontStyle="0" nesting="0" /> <WordsStyle name="FOLDER IN COMMENT" fgColor="000000" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="" fontStyle="0" nesting="0" /> <WordsStyle name="DELIMITERS1" fgColor="408080" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="" fontStyle="1" nesting="0" /> <WordsStyle name="DELIMITERS2" fgColor="000000" bgColor="CCFFFF" fontName="" fontStyle="0" nesting="0" /> <WordsStyle name="DELIMITERS3" fgColor="008000" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="" fontStyle="1" nesting="0" /> <WordsStyle name="DELIMITERS4" fgColor="FF8000" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="" fontStyle="0" nesting="0" /> <WordsStyle name="DELIMITERS5" fgColor="000000" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="" fontStyle="0" nesting="0" /> <WordsStyle name="DELIMITERS6" fgColor="000000" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="" fontStyle="0" nesting="0" /> <WordsStyle name="DELIMITERS7" fgColor="000000" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="" fontStyle="0" nesting="0" /> <WordsStyle name="DELIMITERS8" fgColor="000000" bgColor="FFFFFF" fontName="" fontStyle="0" nesting="0" /> </Styles> </UserLang> </NotepadPlus>

Thanks to everyone, I changed the “SciLexer.dll” file generated by “nmake” with the “ScliLexer.dll” file in the official zip install zip, only that still made the same mistakes, then I put the file in the folder “Unicode Debug” generated by visualstudio that contained the compiled project, then it worked.

Thank you again to everyone and I hope to be able to contribute to this project

@Claudia-Frank

Works perfectly! Thanks so much!

Dear Scott,

Make a ‘really smart’ post? Every post in this topic has a 0 next to it. This is not about smart posts, it’s about somebody simply removing the limitation by clicking someone’s post regardless of usefulness.

Thanks for the explanation, but to me it is limiting enough that I’ll not be returning to this forum until I can have a normal conversation and edit posts with new insights. Most forums allow you to edit you post as long as no one has added a post after yours. Forums have existed for almost 20 years now and this is one of the worst ways to limit spam.

@Niels-Van-Willigenburg

Go to Settings (menu) -> Preferences -> Backup. I think you’ll see “Enable Session Snapshot and Periodic Backup” is checked. Remove the checkmark and then upon exit Notepad++ will prompt you to save the contents of the tabs that are red (changed, or never saved in the case of “new _” files).