I simply don’t have the mental space to go through all these documents and give them names and save them and do all the things. I will get there eventually. Then you will likely lose data. But I also observe that my friends are in the same boat, whenever we need scratch space to write something down, we double click on an empty place on the tab bar, a new tab appears, then data is written and pasted and so on… And then click Ctrl+S and save to a meaningful location, while it’s still fresh in your mind. It’s really easy to add that to your mental workflow. I have many old notepad++\backup folder strewn all over the place Crazy. Those are temporary backup folders, and if you’re keeping them as long-term storage, you are asking to lose data. It is a huge burden to handle and search these. When I need to search my stuff I use Voidtools Everything Why not first, copy all except the active (2026-08-19) backup directory, copy them to a known folder in one location – if you need to, make it a hierarchy, like c:\some\path\old-npp-unsaved\, and then have 2022-08 and 2022-12 and 2026-03 and 2024-01 as subdirectories, if you want/need to keep them separate; or, since every file has the datestamp in it already, just put all the contents of each of those in the same c:\some\path\old-npp-unsaved\ … Then, when you need to search your old backup archives, they are in one easy location. And you can just use Notepad++'s built-in Search > Find in Files, with Directory = c:\some\path\old-npp-unsaved\ and ☑ In all subfolders, then just enter your search term in the FIND WHAT box. But getting back at the current matter, I would like to see more of my tabs, on more than one row but not see all of them at once, which blots out all the reader space. So put in a feature request, as described in our feature request FAQ. I was just warning that it might be harder than you think, or there might not be anyone wanting to do it. But since @thomas-knoefel seems to have an idea for an implementation, then there’s likely to be a PR sometime soonish after you put in the feature request, and then it can quickly get reviewed by the developer. It might even make it into v8.9.9 (it’s too late for v8.9.8, since that’s in Release Candidate), but that means it might actually make it soon. https://superuser.com/questions/153109/is-there-a-way-to-manage-tabs-efficiently-in-notepad [image: 1787241672999-4cb4cf53-2459-4854-bdea-040b96b9ef5d-image.jpeg] I tried finding this in my installation but could not figure it out. Seems that it is buried somewhere in the menus, which would make making a habit of using it difficult. The SU answer was originally from 2010, and then edited in 2015, so the description is confusing, especially in 2026. The Session Manager that they mentioned is not “built in”, it is a plugin. Notepad++ has simplistic native sessions, but nothing to the capability of the Session Manager that they were talking about. To install it, the “Plugin Manager” that was described in 2015 hasn’t been compatible with Notepad++ since v7.6 in 2019. Looking at questions and answers from a decade ago aren’t necessarily going to work in modern Notepad++. Instead, that old plugin manager tool was replaced with the builtin Plugins Admin instead in 2019. And the Session Manager plugin that the ancient SU answer referenced does still exist: you can install it using Plugins > Plugins Admin One thing I really which is to also have the ability to have multiple notepad++ window, like multiple firefox windows. That feature has existed for more than a decade (as I said here, just yesterday – why are people just now discovering the multi-instance capabilities, when it’s essentially always been a part of Notepad++). As was said in yesterday’s conversation, you can drag a tab out into empty space, and it will create a new instance; or, not mentioned yesterday, you can use the right-click context menu on a tab then Move Document, or equivalently use View > Move/Clone Current Document…, to then pick Move to New Instance, and it will open a new Notepad++ window. Or at least have floating notepad++ window with just one tab. This would make my life easier organizationally ! Saving files would make your life easier. The thing I find is that if I have something to write, and it’s urgent, I can’t give it a title, a filename or save it, I have a hard time explaining why those extremely easy things are so hard for me, but I simply cannot. You can, actually. It might take a little retraining, but even an old dog can learn new tricks. The ability to “just write” is probably one of the thing I love the most about notepad++ and I wish it were even easier to “sprawl” even more but that it would help me with staying organized without me having to start organizing it. Hopefully, your AI will be able to help you… though I am doubtful of it. Still, I highly recommend setting up true backup, version control, and a saving system going forward, otherwise you will lose data, and there’s nothing that Notepad++ can do to save you from your current risky behavior. Good luck.

So if I search using (?=.*Error)(?=.*Foobar1)(?=.*Foobar2) With regular expression and newline checked. I do see it boil down to the files I am interested in. My only other need is to see all the lines associated/contained with the AND. … The first table in the FAQ is just showing the logic for matching all of those terms. Later down in the FAQ, there is another table which explains how to find the exact line that matches all of those terms. In your case, the AND would be (?-s)(?:(?=.*Error)(?=.*Foobar1)(?=.*Foobar2))^.*(?:\R|\z) [image: 1787010625218-59c19de8-1eb3-41e3-9fd1-14abdcb43053-image.jpeg] or, using the Find Results via Find All in Current Document: [image: 1787010757984-6f1d47c5-0787-4257-91c0-22189e1d79fc-image.jpeg] dummy example file to show it working: Blah Error Blah Foobar1 blah Foobar2 Blah Warning blah Football1 blah Football2 Blah Foobar2 blah Foobar1 blah Error order doesn't matter Blah Error blah Foobar1 blah Footbark2 won't match because it doesn't have all three

@J-Mark-Barfield , that was not a “regedit”, that was a normal command-line command all those two commands did was run an instance of notepad++.exe without RunAsAdmin privileges, even before you made the change to the executable compatibility settings it was completely unnecessary all you had to do was exit Notepad++ application completely (so it wasn’t running), then do the steps I explained to get notepad++.exe to not run as admin, and then the next time you ran Notepad++ (either using your shortcut or double clicking on the exe or running the exe from the command line normally or double clicking on a text file or right clicking and choosing Edit with Notepad++) would have run Notepad++ not as admin if you didn’t exit Notepad++ first, then the still running Notepad++ instance would still be running as Admin. Changing the exe properties while the exe is running doesn’t magically drop the running Notepad++ out of Admin mode. And thus your right click would not have worked, because the running Notepad++ was still in Admin mode. all you did by doing those extra commands was close the Notepad++ that was running as admin open a new instance that wasn’t running as admin change the exe properties so that it wouldn’t run as admin next time (I understand that you got it working, so you don’t really care at this point. But I don’t want future people to read this discussion, and come to the wrong conclusion that they need to do your extra steps. Those steps were completely unnecessary.)

@Coises said: I expect that Version 0.6.5 will fix this. Noted, thanks again, and I’ll let him know — although he actually doesn’t typically use regex for his own purposes.

@PeterJones thanks mate.

@Coises Thankyou so much, I had two question marks near the end of the code block I was replacing with that I hadn’t escaped, so the code got cut off there. I’d blindly assumed NPP’s find and replace didn’t care about escaping because the code is full of all manner of forwardslashes, colons, and angle brackets and they posed no issue.

i check both the shortcut and the actual file, and both of them have the “run as administrator” unchecked. so any ideas why it keeps opening in admin mode? No immediate idea. But some questions: How do you normally run Notepad++? With a shortcut on the Desktop? With a shortcut on the toolbar? With the start menu? Or running notepad++.exe by double-clicking the executable? Or by double-clicking a file that is associated with Notepad++? Do they all open it in Admin mode, or just some (and which does which, obviously) inside AppData i have only 3 folders: local, locallow, and roaming When I say %AppData%\Notepad++, I mean that you can paste that directly into the path bar of your Explorer window, and the Windows OS will take you to that location: it knows what is meant by %AppData%, even when you don’t. We’ve got a FAQ: What is %AppData% to help you understand what that really means. If you use the variable %AppData%, it will automatically expand into the C:\users\username\AppData\Roaming or whatever path is appropriate for your computer – there are lots of ways to customize it, and it should be safer to tell a user to use %AppData%\Notepad++ rather than trying to guess that their system is set up exactly as I expect it, so it will probably resolve to C:\users\username\AppData\Roaming\Notepad++, but might not. Unfortunately, while that should be safe to use a variable that has held that meaning for decades, and while general Windows computer experience should have taught users what %AppData% actually means, not everyone does. I should have linked to the FAQ earlier. After reading the FAQ, please try to follow the directions again, this time understanding what I (and the operating system) mean by %AppData% , to find the actual %AppData%\Notepad++\plugins\config directory, confirm that NppFTP exists as a subdirectory, and confirming the permissions that I have requested you to check.

@goma-2000 , Your most recent post just quoted previous, not saying anything new. Were you meaning to say something?

@SMD40470 , I think the most likely reason (whether or not you think it’s “serious” enough) is that no one has asked for that feature, and the developer didn’t think of it himself yet. If it was just a UDL issue, I would probably say, “You should put in the feature request, but unfortunately, there have been no new features in UDL for over a decade, with a lot of really good feature requests that would be more fundamental to making UDL work better, so it’s doubtful it would be implemented any time soon.” However, based on this Issue about NFO files and OEM-US/CP437 encoding, it looks like there might be other people interested, even in non-UDL circumstances. So I wonder if the better feature request might be the more generic request, something like [FEATURE REQUEST] Allow setting preferred encoding on a per-language basis. However, there does currently exist a workaround: the AutoCodepage plugin can be used to set default encoding on a per-extension basis. While it might be nice to have it built in, the plugin currently provides the feature. Steps to get it to work: Have a UDL. In my example, I call it MyUDL and I give it the Ext.: smd, so all files ending in .smd will be treated as that UDL. (I picked smd from the letters in your username) Install the plugin Plugins > AutoCodepage > Settings Set Group Name = MyUDL Set Code page to start = OEM 437: US Leave Expected language blank (because that dropdown doesn’t include UDL in the list) Click the + button under the left panel make sure MyUDL is highlighted in the upper left panel of the dialog Set New filename extension(s) = SMD whether you type in lowercase or uppercase, it ends up uppercase the plugin automatically adds the . prefix when you + the extension you could type another extension and + add it if your UDL has multiple possible extensions Click the + button under the right panel The dialog should look like: [image: 1787174274647-5713f8fa-39a7-4597-b1bf-dc5da4e15e3b-image.jpeg] Close the dialog side notes: It took me a few times to figure out the right sequence, because the plugin’s documentation is a bit sparse, which is why I was explicit as to the right order. If you want to add another group – like an MS-DOS NFO group with the same codepage, but defaulting to the NFO language – you would have to follow similar steps of typing the name, setting the encoding and language, then doing the + – even though it looks like you are editing the MyUDL, as soon as you click + instead of Modify, it will create the new entry instead of modifying the old entry; you then make sure the new entry is selected, and add NFO to its extension list. Create a new file, and immediate right-click the tab and name it blah.smd Notepad++ will automatically apply the UDL, since the UDL extension is set to smd AutoCodepage will automatically apply the OEM-US encoding Open an existing blah.smd file Notepad++ will automatically apply the UDL, since the UDL extension is set to smd AutoCodepage will automatically apply the OEM-US encoding The nice thing about this plugin is that it applies that encoding when you first name, or save-and-name a file, and when you open the file from disk. I believe this should meet your needs, even if no one ever requests or implements the feature in native Notepad++.

@saintleningrad-prog , I had not really thought about embedding encrypted text inside another otherwise unencrypted file. Do you have a specific use case, or example use-cases, in mind? In my opinion, all-or-nothing with encryption generally seems sufficient.

@LiivaneLord said: I have noticed that I can now take tab and drag it outside window to make new instance of notepad++. Thank you. That’s not a new feature in v8.9.7. It’s been there a long time (as long as I can remember *). There is only 2 bugs - I cant drag modified file and I cant drag new file from scratch. That’s inherent to the design (and nothing new, so not a regression, and thus shouldn’t be in the Release Announcement anyway) To drag a file to a new instance, there needs to be an underlying file on the filesystem, with all the bytes that you want to open in the new instance, because what Notepad++ does is it launches a new instance of the executable, then uses the internal “file > open” command to read the original file off the disk, then closes the old copy from the old instance of Notepad++. If there wasn’t a file on the disk, there would be nothing for the new instance to read; and if there are unsaved changes, then those changes would not be saved to the disk yet, so the new instance couldn’t read those. To protect you from losing all the unsaved text that you’ve already typed, Notepad++ doesn’t activate the “move to new instance” feature when you try to do it with unsaved changes (whether in a new # document, or in an existing file with unsaved edits). The behavior you described is thus “working as designed” to keep you from unexpectedly losing your data, and thus not a bug (and definitely not a regression). *: update: yes, I tried back to v8.0 in 2021 and even v7.0 from 2016, and I could drag a tab from the tabbar to a new instance, even from the 2016 version of the application. Having proven it worked that way a decade ago, I can confidently say that this is definitely not a new feature. since this is not a new feature, and the problems you are describing are neither a problem with a new feature nor a regression in an existing feature, and they don’t belong in the “Notepad++ release 8.9.7” announcement, this question and reply have been forked to a separate “help wanted” topic.

Search++ version 0.6.5 is available: Update to ICU 78.3 and use static linking for ICU. This is expected to fix problems some testers have had running Search++ on older systems or on minimal Windows installs (like Windows Sandbox). For most users there will be no functional difference between this version and version 0.6.4. Note: There are five icu——.dll files in older versions of Search++ that are not used beginning with version 0.6.5; so it is best to delete the existing Search++ folder (or its contents) before copying, rather than copying the new folder over the old one.

@dcog989 Thanks for this - if you have any tweaks or updates you’ve made since this comment, let me know!

Hi @franz-joli , I haven’t come across such behavior myself and cancelling compare on my side has always been working flawlessly. As @peterjones had already kindly suggested, If you continue to experience such problem you could open an issue here and describe it step-by-step starting with your Notepad++ setup and plugin version (by providing the Notepad++ Debug Info... from its ? menu) and it would be great also if you could provide example files to try on my side. We can discuss the problem further there. Thank you Peter, precise and helpful as always! :)