Important files lost during recent update

Zack Mosbrucker

Please help!

I just updated Notepad++ to version 8.9.6.4 and after the update, I noticed that 2 of the 5 tabs that I use are an extremely outdated version (9/2/25 to be exact). I checked the backup directory and I am only seeing 3 files there, none of them are the file that I am looking for. It seems that a bunch of these files got deleted during the update.

I have checked that session snapshots/backup is enabled and I also checked that the backup path is correct. Also “remember current session for next launch” is also checked. I am not sure what happened here, but I am panicking! Anyone know how I can restore these files? I haven’t had any luck with Recycle bin, OneDrive backups, windows snapshot (unavailable), or the %APPDATA%\Local\Temp directory. Am I screwed here? See below for Debug info. Thanks in advance for any support you can give!

Notepad++ v8.9.6.4 (ARM 64-bit)
Build time: Jun 3 2026 - 23:40:57
Scintilla/Lexilla included: 5.6.2/5.4.9
Boost Regex included: 1_90
pugixml included: 1.15
nlohmann JSON included: 3.12.0
Path: C:\Program Files\Notepad++\notepad++.exe
Command Line: “C:\Users\zack.mosbrucker\AppData\Roaming\Notepad++\session.xml.inCaseOfCorruption.bak”
Admin mode: OFF
Local Conf mode: OFF
Cloud Config: OFF
WinGUp: present
disableNppAutoUpdate.xml: absent
Periodic Backup: ON
Placeholders: OFF
Scintilla Rendering Mode: SC_TECHNOLOGY_DIRECTWRITE (1)
Multi-instance Mode: monoInst
asNotepad: OFF
File Status Auto-Detection: cdEnabledNew (for current file/tab only)
Dark Mode: OFF
Display Info:
primary monitor: 1920x1080, scaling 100%
visible monitors count: 3
installed Display Class adapters:
0000: Description - Qualcomm® Adreno™ X1-85 GPU
0000: DriverVersion - 31.0.133.1
OS Name: Windows 11 Enterprise (64-bit)
OS Version: 24H2
OS Build: 26100.8457
Current ANSI codepage: 1252
Plugins:
mimeTools (3.1)
NppConverter (4.7)
NppExport (0.4)

PeterJones

@Zack-Mosbrucker ,

see the Backup FAQ: section on “Scenario: My (unsaved) files are missing!” for recovery ideas

The only files in the backup directory are files that have unsaved changes when Notepad++ exits; once you have saved the file, it is deleted from there. And even if your session file is overwritten (it should not have been, the Notepad++ installer intentionally does not overwrite it), the files in the backup subdirectory should not have been touched, as the installer does nothing with that subfolder, so that strongly implies that there weren’t unsaved changes in other files. In which case, the original files should still be wherever you had last saved them.

If you had a strange update scenario, it might change the expectation:

If you uninstalled before you did the update, it might have deleted files in there (though it only does that if you specifically tell it to).
If you had originally had Notepad++ installed someplace other than c:\program files\notepad++ and the old copy was set to doLocalConf or cloud-config or manual -settingsDir, then the old session file and backup files would be wherever that other copy was looking for it.
- If you think this is the case, search your drive(s) for notepad++.exe, and anyplace other than c:\program files\notepad++\notepad++.exe that it’s found might give you a clue as to where to look for the backup files from that other instance of Notepad++

Zack Mosbrucker

@PeterJones - So does this mean if I accidentally saved a named file that opened as the old version, then I cannot recover what I had before?

I replaced my PC last September and created a directory containing all of my notepad files. When I look in that directory, they have not been modified/saved since 9/2/2025. I have had 9 months of updates since then and after today’s update I cannot find the most recent version anywhere. I’m a bit lost here…

PeterJones

@Zack-Mosbrucker said:

@PeterJones - So does this mean if I accidentally saved a named file that opened as the old version, then I cannot recover what I had before?

If you hit SAVE, then the file on disk in the main filesystem contains the contents that were visible at that time, then as far as I know, you cannot recover it (because it almost certainly overwrote the same portion of disk, or the portion that it freed has since been used by your disk). If you had no other backups of important-to-you files, then that is unfortunate.

But, I think you’re under a mis-impression: if you hadn’t been hitting SAVE at any point in the last 9 months, then the file on disk in your normal “notepad” directory has never been written to in the last 9 months, so you didn’t “overwrite” anything. Notepad++'s peridodic-backup (better known as a “snapshot”) ONLY writes to the %AppData%\Notepad++\backup directory, not to the main file’s location, so it has never saved your file there, so there was nothing to be overwritten. If those backups somehow got deleted (and we cannot know how they did, though the installer/updater does not have code to do anything with that directory, so it seems unlikely to me that the installer/updater is the culprit), then the only place that those files have been written to disk was deleted. (And, as it says in the FAQ, you could try to use Recuva or similar recovery software on the %AppData%\Notepad++\backup directory, to see if there are remnants of the deleted backups)

I replaced my PC last September and created a directory containing all of my notepad files. When I look in that directory, they have not been modified/saved since 9/2/2025. I have had 9 months of updates since then and after today’s update I cannot find the most recent version anywhere.

Then you presumably never hit SAVE anytime in those 9 months, until after you had the problem. That’s sad.

As I said, given your settings, any files with unsaved changes should have been in the %AppData%\Notepad++\backup directory. Unfortunately, you have not given any clue as to the exact sequence of events (nor answered whether it was an unusual “update” procedure, by either going from one type of install to another, or by using “uninstall” first), to help someone debug why, on very rare occasions, people have difficulty with losing their session and/or backup files.

To prevent data loss in the future, I highly recommend either adding Ctrl+S to your frequent keystroke mental pattern, or click the menu entry or toolbar icon, or use the AutoSave plugin (as described in the FAQ I already linked). Given that you hadn’t hit SAVE anytime in 9 months, I highly recommend installing that plugin, then following the FAQ to set it to actually automatically save your files to their normal folders

Zack Mosbrucker

@PeterJones - There was nothing unusual that I noticed about the install. Seemed just like any other update done previously. I didn’t realize the backups could be deleted, which is why I never bothered to save. Pretty stupid, I know, but I got away with it up until this point.

Anyhow, sounds like my only hope is to try and use Recuva. I’ll give that a shot and cross my fingers that it can somehow be recovered.

Appreciate you taking the time to help with this!

Konsolate

This is garbage! No other update has destroyed so much!
Everything is lost.

No way to undo?!

Just garbage.

You need to take a serious look at how this program updates and why it decided to overwrite anything at all.

Seppuku would be more pleasurable than this travesty. $%@^%#@!!

PeterJones

Everything is lost.

I am sorry. That must be annoying.

No way to undo?!

As was said above, recovery software might help.

But no, once the OS has deleted a file, for whatever reason, there’s nothing that fellow Notpead++ users can do for you, other than commiserate, suggest recovery software, and encourage you to take proactive control of your data integrity in the future – the backup FAQ linked above was written to help you with the last two of those.

I have never lost data due to Notepad++ mistakes. I have multiple times lost data because Microsoft products messed up, and their “auto save” feature didn’t work as described: the first time, it prompted me to look into MS settings, to figure out the best way to prevent it from happening again; the second time, I determined that MS features weren’t sufficient, so it prompted me to write VBA scripts to do auto-save for me, in a way that would really work. Fortunately for Notepad++ users, they don’t have to write a VBA script (or PythonScript) to do that – they just have to install and configure the useful AutoSave plugin, described in the FAQ linked above.

You need to take a serious look at how this program updates and why it decided to overwrite anything at all.

Unfortunately, I am a fellow user, and I cannot much understand the code used in the installer.

But when I search the installer code, the only mention I see of the “backup” directory is in the uninstaller, in the section specific for actionns that only occur when you tell the uninstaller to remove-my-settings – so the uninstaller touches that folder, only if you tell it to; as far as I can tell, the installer never does anything with that folder (it doesn’t even create it when it doesn’t exist)

And do you honestly think that the developer and the volunteers who know the installation code have not looked for edge cases in the code (seriously) that could somehow allow this, given that it’s been reported before? Unfortunately, no one has been able to give enough details to make it a situation that the developer and volunteers can replicate, so they are unable to find what appears to be a 1-in-a-million situation. (I’m not exaggerating that, I don’t think: there are millions of users of Notepad++, and likely there have been tens of millions of “upgrades” executed in Notepad++, and only a dozen or two reports of people having the backup\ directory emptied by the process. That’s literally 1-in-a-million.)

In case you did’t notice or understand the tagline of this Forum: this is “The Community of users of the Notepad++ text editor” (emphasis added). This Forum is for fellow users of Notepad++ trying to help each other: this is not the official bug report location; if you are having trouble finding that, I suggest looking in the FAQ section of this forum: if you have an exact sequence of events that led to your data loss, and can explain it in detail without resorting to Q*bert-isms or cursing at volunteers, feel free to look for an existing official issue, or create your own if one doesn’t exist yet, where you provide enough details for someone to replicate the problem and finally solve it

If you don’t have details, or can’t be bothered to make an actual report, then I suggest you read the backup FAQ to determine what settings and/or plugins will help you prevent future data loss, because that’s the most that a fellow user of Notepad++ can do for you at this point.

PeterJones

@Konsolate said:

Everything is lost.

Also, while we confirmed with @zack-mosbrucker that the backup folder was empty, you never confirmed that. Are you sure that folder was empty, or did your session file just get reset? (If you don’t know where yours is, it’s probably in %AppData%\Notepad++\backup\ – if it’s not there, share your ? > Debug Info and we can help you find it.)

Notepad++ backs up the session file into session.xml.inCaseOfCorruption.bak, so if you still have files in the backup\ folder, then you can recover the old session if you exit Notpead++, rename session.xml.inCaseOfCorruption.bak to session.xml, and restart Notepad++, and it will go back to the previous version of the session file. And if it still doesn’t open all the files from your backup folder, you can just manually open those files from Notepad++, and then save them to a reasonable known location on your computer, so that you won’t lose them again in the future.