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the new instance, because it hasn’t written it to the config.xml yet, so when the new instance reads config.xml, it is out-of-date.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.

@PeterJones ok man Thank you, the method worked.

@Coises said: I might be missing something. Do you find that it is not obvious enough in the document window itself when lines are hidden (the horizontal lines where the hidden lines are)? Thanks for your hint; I see, the mistake is on my side! I use a different background color and my eyes are getting older ;-) Therefore I did not see the lines between the text: My configuration vs. Default theme: [image: 1785264398025-b4c2960d-2d83-4c60-a13b-064ce8ffdd81-image.jpeg] / [image: 1785264414096-3749de5d-cf73-4ea2-ad28-54e459e8bf8d-image.jpeg] Now I know where to look. Good point. I will fix that — not necessarily in the very next release, but I will fix it. I know you have a lot of topics on your list that are much more urgent. For me it is a ‘nice to have’. Thanks for your help.

So I just updated yesterday & now my notes aren’t the most recent ones & I’ve lost a lot of data. Bummer. To fully understand the rest of my reply, I highly recommend reading and understanding our Backup FAQ. If your last run before the update was as Admin, it might not have saved your session file and/or backups in the expected manner, because of permission conflict. With modern Notepad++, you can edit protected files, and it will just ask Windows to ask you for UAC permission when you try to save, so you never have to run Notepad++ as admin for infrequent protected-file edits. (If you are frequently editing protected files, the frequent UAC might get annoying… but that would be the only situation under which I would ever even think about running Notepad++ as Admin in the modern era.) I am positive I had auto save checked off & I had them saved to a specific folder (not the default). There is no “auto save” option native to Notepad++. You’ll have to be more specific about the actual preference name, to give us a better understanding of how your Notepad++ is configured. (My original guess was that you meant you had “session snapshot and periodic backup” off, but see below…) If that wasn’t working, where can I find the previous saved notes? Your saved files are exactly where you saved them. If you don’t know where that is, no one here can search your computer for you. As described in the FAQ, if you have “enable session snapshot and periodic backup” turned on , then the copies of files that have unsaved changes would be saved in %AppData%\Notepad++\backup. If your session file was corrupted, maybe you’ll be lucky and your unsaved-file-snapshots will still be in that backup directory. Actually, you might want to try your %AppData%\Notepad++\session.xml.inCaseOfCorruption.bak file: Exit Notepad++ Windows Explorer, go to %AppData%\Notepad++ Rename session.xml to session.xml--keep Copy session.xml.inCaseOfCorruption.bak to session.xml Run Notepad++ → If it’s now showing the right copy of your files, great! If not, exit Notepad++, delete session.xml, and rename session.xml--keep back to session.xml If the session experiment didn’t work, then look in the %AppData%\Notepad++\backup folder, and open those files directly in Notepad++. If any of them are the most recent versions of your files, great, save them to the right location under the right name, and look into version control and/or external backup so you don’t lose important data again. (update: I added that procedure as a third section in the backup FAQ for easy reference going forward) Admin mode: ON Running with Admin mode will sometimes mess up saved preferences, etc. No one’s found a cause, but my theory is the different ways that Windows OS treats %AppData% (where the config files are stored) when you’re the normal user vs the admin user. Periodic Backup: ON This contradicts my guess as to what you meant when you said “auto save checked off”. My answers above do explain things to check, assuming that you had Periodic Backup turned on before your update, too.

@BlackX777 , That was brought to the developer’s attention in the repo issues last week. Unfortunately, take-down requests can take time.

moderator aside: I approved the above post after removing what was likely just a spam URL. I am doubtful that the OP actually intended it as anything but an excuse to drive traffic to their 3DS site. But the questions asked aren’t completely out of the realm of general interest for a Notepad++ forum, so I decided to sanitize the post and let it stay, in case it drives actual discussion. Changed the Topic Title to be more generic, to match what’s on-topic for this forum. @mohsin-raza , Those workflow steps all seem reasonable to do in Notepad++. Comparing different versions of articles before publishing. I definitely use the Compare++ plugin to compare files: if you’re using Git or SVN for version control, it even has the ability to do the equivalent of git-diff or svn-diff, without having to manually have two copies with different versions of the same file, so you can see how the file has changed since your last commit, which is quite useful. use Notepad++ for large documentation projects outside of software development. I mean, there are plenty of people who use Notepad++ for making websites. There are some users here who pester us with a gazillion questions on how to edit raw HTML with regex (even though regex isn’t the best tool, since HTML is too free-form for most regex to work effectively). And I use Notepad++ for editing the Markdown of the Notepad++ User Manual. But I don’t do much “fancy” outside of normal Notepad++ usage (with the occasional MarkdownViewer++ to preview the rendered version of the Markdown… though since we use hugo, I actually use hugo to render to HTML and view it in my browser instead, because of hugo’s special features that MarkdownViewer++ doens’t render properly) Do you use any plugins … Depending on the underlying language/filetype of the documentation: HTML ⇒ there are plenty of plugins helpful with HTML – just use Plugins Admin and type in HTML, and it will step through some. Though one of the most useful would be XML Tools, which can help with pretty-printing Markdown ⇒ there are multiple plugins for helping with Markdown: there are some “preview” tools which render your markdown into a panel inside the Notepad++ window, for example. Again, typing Markdown in the search bar in Plugins Admin will give you some ideas GitSCM ⇒ allows you to integrate Git version control actions inside the Notepad++ interface, so you don’t have to drop to the command line or using a git GUI in Windows Explorer custom themes Themes are just the color sets for the builtin languages. Everyone has different preferences as to what colors “look best” to their eyes. I don’t understand how you could think “custom themes” would help; would you care to explain/expound on that? Did you mean “custom User Defined Languages [UDL]”, which allows custom keyword-based syntax highlighting? Then, depending on what languages/format you are using for the text of the documentation, some might help. Notepad++ already ships with a Markdown UDL, but if you don’t like the colors that ship with N++, you can always edit the UDL to choose different colors. And, since it’s a UDL, if you don’t like the decisions that were used for how to apply keyword-based styling to something that’s more punctuation-based, you can play with alternatives. If you have an underlying language/format for your file that’s not found int he Languages list, you should consider looking at the UDL Collection repository, which collects user-submitted UDL, and many languages have one or more user-submitted UDL (and some have associated functionList and autoCompletion definitions). The CollectionInterface plugin (available thru Plugins Admin) can make it easier to install such a UDL (especially with the FL or AC additions) rather than manually trying to figure out where to put each of those files. But all-in-all, your post seems so generic and vague that I’m not convinced that you didn’t just use an AI with a prompt like “pretend I use [INSERT TEXT EDITOR NAME HERE] to edit my documentation, and write a post for me that adds a link to [WEBSITE URL AND NAME HERE] in something that they won’t mark as spam/off-topic”. If that’s what you did, you failed, because we didn’t include your spam link in your post. Please read the rules of this forum before posting more spam. If your future posts – to this topic, or any other topic in this forum – try to re-include links to your site, or other sites you might want to advertize, you will be banned. Other posts in this discussion which include links to sites not related to Notepad++ will also be blocked and their users banned. If this topic just devolves into an attempted honeypot, where the only posts are people trying to violate these restrictions, the topic will be locked.

Corrupted Session Starting in Notepad++ v8.6.5, it will store session.xml.inCaseOfCorruption.bak next to session.xml, and will automatically use that if session.xml is corrupted. However, if you ever find that you open Notepad++ (especially after an update or a system crash) and find that the files opened weren’t in the same state as when you let them, you can try this procedure: Exit Notepad++ Windows Explorer, go to %AppData%\Notepad++ (or in your appropriate config-file location if you aren’t using AppData for config) Rename session.xml to session.xml--keep Copy session.xml.inCaseOfCorruption.bak to session.xml Run Notepad++ → If it’s now showing the right copy of your files, great! If not, exit Notepad++, delete session.xml, and rename session.xml--keep back to session.xml .

1.2.2 Syntax highlighting PowerShell Improved absolute, relative, quoted and unquoted paths colors [image: 1785402977913-paths.png] Improved variables interpolation colors [image: 1785402952228-interpolation.png] [image: 1785402954396-interpolation4.png] Added colors for expressions $(..), ${..} Added registry hives colors (HKLM, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, …) Fixed syntax highlighting Fixed variables colors inside paths and quotes Fixed excessive colors of variables, keywords, and functions enclosed in quotes Fixed unexpected sc.. and vk.. colors in AutoHotkey code Disabled colors for variables inside single quotes ' ' (because single quotes prevents var. interpolation)

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