@robstoddard ,

Personally, I just have a file named Peter's Scratchpad.txt that’s always open, where I paste things like that (and, admittedly, things that started like that but have just stayed around in that file for a lot longer than originally intended). And if I save the “temporary data” in the file, who cares? I just delete the stuff out of the file that I don’t need anymore when I don’t need them anymore. That way, I can just Save All or use the Auto-Save plugin as much as I want, without having to ask for a specific feature to “not save this one thing”.

@DougB-MFY ,

Not exactly, but you might get “close enough”

With keyboard+mouse, the shift+scrollwheel would allow you to horizontally scroll without clicking (but having to use the scrollwheel isn’t truly “keyboard”) [END] [space] [backspace] seems to work for me, but it introduces a “fake edit” to get it, so that might annoy you

One of those might be “close enough” for you. But there isn’t a keystroke that does it on its own

@Cletos ,

Depending on what version of Notepad++ you were running, and what’s happened since you last opened Notepad++:

Exit Notepad++ Use Windows Explorer to go %AppData%\Notepad++ You will have session.xml and hopefully a file called session.xml.inCaseOfCorruption.bak . Rename session.xml to session.after.xml Rename session.xml.inCaseOfCorruption.bak to session.xml

Depending on the state, and how little you’ve done since you had the problem, and what version of Notepad++ you are running, that backup session might contain the ~100 txt files.

If not (if there’s no session.xml.inCaseOfCorruption.bak , or if the copy there was written after your session got messed up), there is nothing we can do for you, as the backup session isn’t there. (Hopefully, those 100 txt files were all real files, not new 1 … new 100 with no saved changes ever – if they were, you can look in the backup subdirectory, but again, no guarantees the files are there).

As a reminder to all readers of this Topic, the Community Forum is “The Community of users of the Notepad++ text editor”, as it says in the footer of every single page here (emphasis added). As such, this is just users, talking about Notepad++ and helping each other other. Feature Requests are not tracked here. So all of these “I cannot believe it’s still this way” are effectively just complaining to other users; if that’s theraputic to you, fine; but it won’t tell the developer how many people are interested in that feature being implemented, so it’s just spitting in the wind, so to speak.

We have a FAQ that explains where the Feature Request tracker is. And you could search there (in both open and closed requests) if you want to find the official issue(s) tracking such a request, and see how the developer has responded to such requests, if at all.

@Diederik858 said in I don't want grouped files when I open the download folder in Windows 11.:

When I open the file explorer from Notepad++, I don’t want to have grouped files (day, month, etc.).

When you open the file explorer from Notepad++, you are being directed into a Windows application, the Explorer. And, as such, it follows the Explorer settings for how any individual directory should look. It is exactly identical to you using Windows’ Win+R key and launching explorer "%UserProfile%\Downloads"

As such, you would change the Explorer settings for the Download directory the same way you would from any explorer window (Explorer’s Sort > Group By > (None)) – but this isn’t Notepad++ advice, this is general Windows advice; as such, a Notepad++ forum isn’t the best place for further discovering Windows Explorer features.

Hi, @jak and All,

Refer to this post :

https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/post/105114

BR

guy038

@Claudia-Svenson said in How to set "UTF-8 WITH BOM" as default Encoding even for old but changed textfiles?:

This would be a great convenient enhancement feature.

Natively, there is no such feature (and it’s not likely to happen, IMO).

Using a plugin, it’s doable. For now, it requires using a not-yet-released version of the EditorConfig plugin, but they are supposedly eventually going to release a new version with all the features/fixes from the last 6 years.

EditorConfig plugin should be able to handle the charset attribute. But the version available in Plugins Admin is still 6 years old, and does not include that attribute. They merged the PR that implemented charset in 2023, but have not done a release since v0.4.0.0 in 2019. (In October 2025, they put in an Issue to encourage themselves to do a release, but there’s still apparently a showstopper preventing them from moving forward.)

I just forked their repo, and did a build based on their most recent codebase; I call that “0.4.0.1”, so that there’s something to distinguish it from the official version. For a couple of months from 2026-Mar-30, GitHub should have some artifacts of my v0.4.0.1 build.

Exit Notepad++ Go to https://github.com/pryrt/npp-editorconfig-plugin/actions/runs/23767310769#artifacts and download the right artifact for your machine (most likely the one ending in --x64). Unzip, and copy the DLL to c:\Program Files\Notepad++\Plugins\NppEditorConfig\NppEditorConfig.dll create .editorconfig file at the top of your document structure (like c:\users\username\.editorconfig), populate it with:root = true [*.bat] charset = utf-8 [*.py] charset = utf-8 [*.txt] charset = utf-8-bom [*.ps1] charset = utf-8-bom The next time you save a file with one of those extensions (as long as it’s in the same folder as the .editorconfig file, or a subdirectory of that folder), it will use the charset indicated when you save the file in Notepad++

(GitHub will remove those artifacts sometime in the next few months. If EditorConfig hasn’t done an official release since then, and the files are gone, feel free to ping me here, and I can trigger a new build to GitHub)

Yes—Notepad++ doesn’t automatically strip HTML, but copying through plain-text mode (like Notepad or Reader View) removes all tags. To retain <p> and <br>, avoid pasting via plain text—either paste directly into Blogger’s HTML view and clean unwanted code manually, or use an HTML cleaner tool to keep only specific tags instead of stripping everything.

@guy038 said in About single and duplicate lines...:

About single and duplicate lines…
General Discussion
1 posts
1 posters
225 views

guy038
Mar 24, 2026, 8:45 PM

Hello, All,

Reading that post made me realize that searching for single or duplicate lines is a very common task. Some time ago, for my personal workflow, I had written a method to solve the main cases ! So, in this post, I’m going to show you, from an original file, how to keep :

All single lines, ONLY

All duplicate lines, ONLY

All single lines and the first copy of all duplicate lines

All single lines and the last copy of all duplicate lines

The first copy of all duplicate lines, ONLY

The last copy of all duplicate lines, ONLY

I’ll use a file, named Test_File.txt, that both contains single lines and duplicate lines that appear in 2, 3, 4 or more times. It contains 48 color palettes, found from various sites and added one after another, giving a total of 78,117 records whose 39,532 are single lines and 38,585 are duplicate lines. On the other hand, if we count one copy of all the duplicates, this file contains 11,290 different duplicate lines.

To test my solutions, simply download this UTF-8 file ( 5,937,560 bytes ) from my Google Drive account :

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aYOpKon4KYw_NXSdj4Tm4Ti_FrygC2ky/view?usp=sharing

Remarks :

Note the definition of single lines : these are lines that differ in characters and/or case from all the other lines of the current file. For example, in this small file of 14 lines, below :

ABC xyz 123 789 HIJ HIJ 123 AbC 123 HIJ abc HIJ 456 xyz

The 5 lines ABC, AbC, abc, 789 and 456 are considered to be single lines, as different in chars and/or case from all the other lines.

The 3 123 lines are considered to be a duplicate line with 3 copies ( Multiple occurrences )

The 2 xyz lines are considered to be a duplicate line with 2 copies ( Multiple occurrences )

Les 4 HIJ lines are considered to be a duplicate line with 4 copies ( Multiple occurrences )

IMPORTANT :

I’ve done some of the work for you, by adding a final column that numbers all lines in this file. Thus, is will be easy to restore the original order of the remaining records, after that each processing is complete. So, in case you need this initial order :

Put the caret right before the present number, at the end of the first line

Run the Edit > Begin/End Select in Column Mode option ( or use the Alt + Shift + B shortcut )

Move to the last line of the file

Put the caret right before the present number, at the end of the last line

Run again the Edit > Begin/End Select in Column Mode option ( or use the Alt + Shift + B shortcut )

=> A ZERO-LINE column mode selection should appear throughout all the lines

Then, run the Edit > Line Operations > Sort Lines Lexicographically Ascending option
=> The original order of the remaining records, AFTER completion of one of the 6 methods below, should be back !

In each procedure, below, 1 or 2 S/R are used. To process them :

First, cancel any existing selection to ensure that any line-end character will be taken in account during the S/R phase

Open the Replace dialog ( Ctrl + H )

Uncheck all box options

Check the Wrap around option

Select the Regular expression search mode

Click on the Replace All button

(1) To keep all the SINGLE lines ONLY ( 39,532 records ) :
Paste the Text_File.txt contents in a new tab

Switch to that new tab and select all text ( Ctrl + A )

Run the Edit > Line Operations > Sort Lines Lexicographically Ascending option

Click anywhere, in the new tab, to cancel the entire selection

SEARCH (?x-is) ^ ( .+ ) .{7} \R (?: \1 .{7} \R )+

REPLACE Leave EMPTY

Perform the IMPORTANT section, above

(2) To keep all the DUPLICATE lines ONLY ( 38,585 records = 78,117 - 39,532 ) :
Paste the Text_File.txt contents in a new tab

Switch to that new tab and select all text ( Ctrl + A )

Run the Edit > Line Operations > Sort Lines Lexicographically Ascending option

Click anywhere, in the new tab, to cancel the entire selection

SEARCH (?x-is) ^ ( .+ ) .{7} \R (?: \1 .{7} \R )+ (*SKIP) (*F) | ^ .+ \R

REPLACE Leave EMPTY

Perform the IMPORTANT section, above

(3) To keep all the SINGLE lines and the FIRST copy of ALL the DUPLICATE lines, found AFTER the sort ( 50,822 records ) :
Paste the Text_File.txt contents in a new tab

Switch to that new tab and select all text ( Ctrl + A )

Run the Edit > Line Operations > Sort Lines Lexicographically Ascending option

Click anywhere, in the new tab, to cancel the entire selection

SEARCH (?x-is) ^ ( ( .+ ) .{7} \R ) (?: \2 .{7} \R )+

REPLACE \1

Perform the IMPORTANT section, above

(4) To keep all the SINGLE lines and the LAST copy of all the DUPLICATE lines, found AFTER the sort ( 50,822 records ) :
Paste the Text_File.txt contents in a new tab

Switch to that new tab and select all text ( Ctrl + A )

Run the Edit > Line Operations > Sort Lines Lexicographically Ascending option

Click anywhere, in the new tab, to cancel the entire selection

SEARCH (?x-is) ^ ( .+ ) .{7} \R (?: \1 .{7} \R )* ( \1 .{7} \R )

REPLACE \2

Perform the IMPORTANT section, above

(5) To keep the FIRST copy of all the DUPLICATE lines ONLY, found AFTER the sort ( 11,290 = 50,822 - 39,532 ) :
Paste the Text_File.txt contents in a new tab

Switch to that new tab and select all text ( Ctrl + A )

Run the Edit > Line Operations > Sort Lines Lexicographically Ascending option

Click anywhere, in the new tab, to cancel the entire selection

SEARCH (?x-is) ^ ( .+ ) .{7} \R (?: \1 .{7} \R )+ (*SKIP) (*F) | ^ .+ \R

REPLACE Leave EMPTY

Then :

SEARCH (?x-is) ^ ( ( .+ ) .{7} \R ) (?: \2 .{7} \R )+

REPLACE \1

Perform the IMPORTANT section, above

(6) To keep the LAST copy of all the DUPLICATE lines ONLY, found AFTER the sort ( 11,290 = 50,822 - 39,532 ) :
Paste the Text_File.txt contents in a new tab

Switch to that new tab and select all text ( Ctrl + A )

Run the Edit > Line Operations > Sort Lines Lexicographically Ascending option

Click anywhere, in the new tab, to cancel the entire selection

SEARCH (?x-is) ^ ( .+ ) .{7} \R (?: \1 .{7} \R )+ (*SKIP) (*F) | ^ .+ \R

REPLACE Leave EMPTY

Then :

SEARCH (?x-is) ^ ( .+ ) .{7} \R (?: \1 .{7} \R )* ( \1 .{7} \R )

REPLACE \2

Perform the IMPORTANT section, above

At the very end of any of these choices, you may delete the extra numeration :

SEARCH (?x-s) .{7} $

REPLACE Leave EMPTY

Then run the Edit > Blank Operations > Trim Trailing Space

Best Regards,

guy038

P.S. :

Note that there is also a native way to get all the single lines and the first copy of all the duplicate lines, found with the present order ( 50,822 records ) :

Paste the Text_File.txt contents in a new tab

Switch to that new tab

Delete the numeration, at end of each line :

SEARCH (?x-s) .{7} $

REPLACE Leave EMPTY

Then, use the Edit > Line Opérations > Remove Duplicate lines option

That’s a pretty solid breakdown 👍

For most cases though, I’d honestly just go with the built-in “Remove Duplicate Lines” unless you specifically need first/last occurrences. Way simpler and less error-prone.

The regex approach is powerful, but yeah… a bit overkill unless you’re dealing with very specific cases or large datasets.

@Claudia-Frank

Some seven years later: exactly my query too. Many thanks. 😊😊

JsonTools v8.5 is now available on the plugin manager for Notepad++ 8.9.3. The main change is that ANSI-encoded documents containing non-ASCII characters can now be parsed correctly.

@PeterJones said in Make notrepad++ default:

It seems a mixed bag: wanting it as system default, associated with lots of file types, and using the Shell Extension, but not wanting to “install” it. It might help us give you better advice if you explain what parts of the “install” that you are opposed to. Is it just storing the settings in %AppData% that you don’t like? Or is there something else? The installer can install into any directory, not just Program Files; the installer can choose to not use %AppData% (as long as it’s not installed in Program Files); the installer automatically registers the Shell Extension for you.

Thanks for all the patience and instruction. I studied those data transfer tutorials, and I “think” I got it right. A little complicated because in Portableapps, in some cases there are up to three iterations of the same file in separate locations. So far, it looks and behaves like the Portableapps.

Is it just storing the settings in %AppData% that you don’t like?

I know the best way to do things is the install. I like to keep things simple. I have very limited space on my OS partition, so I like to keep things as simple as I can by going portable whenever possible, and locating elsewhere. It also makes things easier if you must do an image restore.

That said, considering what you have advised, I think I will do the install. and avoid storing the settings in %AppData%.

After the installation now that I have the working portable version. can I move it to the install directory, mindful of the fact that there will be files in that directory that must retained? Or is it not that simple?

Update: @Ertan-Küçükoglu didn’t post the link here, but had made https://github.com/ScintillaOrg/lexilla/issues/321 to request this feature from Lexilla. Lexilla just merged a PR to add SCE_PAS_MULTILINESTRING styleID=15. Since Lexilla v5.4.8 was just released last week, it’s likely going to be a few weeks to a couple months before v5.4.9 is released to include that feature. But once it is, and once Notepad++ imports the updated Lexilla, then that new style can be added to the Pascal/Delphi definitions in stylers/themes. So hopefully, this will be added to Notepad++ within the next few months.

(Keep an eye on Notepad++'s Issue #16807 to see when it gets added to the codebase; whatever release happens after that Issue is closed will be the first Notepad++ release to incude the multi-line string highlighting.)