Disable menu activation for a shortcut.

[Steve King]

Hello Notepad++ folks,

How do I unmap or otherwise prevent a shortcut from activating a menu?

For example, I mapped Alt-L to delete line. My shortcut works (line is deleted), but also activates the “Language” menu, which I do not want.

Thanks in advance for the help.

[guy038]

Hello, @steve-king,

Ah, yes, the Alt + Letter shortcuts are, usually, associated with the some choices of the menu bar !

To change these default shortcuts :

• Close any instance of Notepad++

• Localize the english_customizable.xml file, in the localization folder, under :

  • The installation folder of Notepad++.exe, for a local installation, with the zero-length file doLocalConf.xml

  • The folder %AppData%\Roaming\Notepad++, in case of installation, with the installer, on a W7, W8 or W10 machine

  • The folder %AppData%\Notepad++, in case of installation, with the installer, on a Win XP or Vista machine

• At beginning of that file, in the <Entries> section, change the line :

<Item menuId="language" name="&amp;Language"/>

by, for instance, this one :

<Item menuId="language" name="Lan&amp;guage"/>

• Save the changes of english_customizable.xml file

• Re-start Notepad++

• Choice the option Settings > Preferences... > General > Localization

• Select the language English (customizable)

• Click on the Close button

=> From now on, you’ll have to hit the shortcut Alt + G, to select the Language menu ! … and no more conflict with your Alt + L shortcut :-D

Best Regards,

guy038

[Scott Sumner]

@guy038 ,

Very nice–I didn’t know these type of key combinations could be reassigned, or even REMOVED entirely (just delete the “&” part completely instead of moving it to another selection of the menu word). But it makes sense as you could change the File menu text to say “Panda” (or whatever) if you wanted, and there is no “F” in that!

One thing I did try was to NOT close and restart Notepad++…and it works just fine this way. Even though I already had “English (customizable)” selected in the dropdown in the Preferences, all I had to do was drop down the menu like I was going to change AWAY from “English (customizable)”, but then actually just reselect it. After that any changes made to the english_customizable.xml file take effect.

[Scott Sumner]

@Scott-Sumner

Oops. It appears that if you remove & entirely from the text of a menu item, the original Alt-based keycombo will still work (Alt+F in the case of File, Alt+L in the case of Language, etc), even though there will be no underline of that letter when the “File Edit Search…” menu is activated by pressing and releasing Alt alone. :(

In the earlier post, where I said & it should have been & I didn’t check the markdown. :(

[Steve King]

I also removed the & completely, and trying to diagnose why I still saw default behavior was driving me crazy. I ended up just adding &_ to the end of each menu item.

[Victorel Petrovich]

@guy038 doesn’t work anymore… Tried both deleting and moving a bit that & thing.

[Alan Kilborn]

@Victorel-Petrovich said in Disable menu activation for a shortcut.:

doesn’t work anymore… Tried both deleting and moving a bit that & thing.

It DOES work; suspect that you just did something wrong so that it didn’t work for YOU.

[mkupper]

@Victorel-Petrovich said in Disable menu activation for a shortcut.:

@guy038 doesn’t work anymore… Tried both deleting and moving a bit that & thing.

It works but without more details from you it’s hard to provide constructive feedback.

One bit of good news is that you don’t need to exit/restart Notepad++. That may have been needed in the year 2017 when this thread was started but is not needed in newer versions. You still need to do the other step with selecting your language in Preferences / General / Language but can even select the same language you are already using. Just move the selection up or down a line and then back. You will see the screen repaint and update.

Try adding extra letters or digits to a menu item. For example, append a digit so that you have <Item menuId="language" name="&amp;Language 1"/>. When you select the language in Preferences you should immediately see Language 1 in the menu line. It will show up the instant you move the language selector thing to the row for the language file you are making changes to.

[Alan Kilborn]

@mkupper said in Disable menu activation for a shortcut.:

That may have been needed in the year 2017

It hasn’t been true since at least 2015 (the year I started using N++).

[Victorel Petrovich]

This post is deleted!

[Victorel Petrovich]

@mkupper @Alan-Kilborn
With the Installer, the steps don’t work, at least on my system that is, if you mean to edit “english_customizable.xml” in the user’s “%AppData%\Notepad++”, according to documentation https://npp-user-manual.org/docs/binary-translation/,

Here’s the catch:
if I have “english_customizable.xml” ONLY in folder “localization” (created by me) in “%AppData%\Notepad++”, and not in (default) install directory, then there is no English (customizable) option in Settings -> Preferences -> General -> Localization.

On the other hand, if I have have “english_customizable.xml” in folder “localization” both in Install directory (either because I select that lang during installation, or added it later), and in my “%AppData%\Notepad++” one,
then yes, that option is present there, BUT: my edits in the local “english_customizable.xml” are not taken in consideration.
I have to edit the version in “installdir\localization” folder for it to have effect.

It behaves as if it looks for the localization folder only in install directory.

[Alan Kilborn]

@Alan-Kilborn said in Disable menu activation for a shortcut.:

It DOES work; suspect that you just did something wrong so that it didn’t work for YOU.

How about “in general, it does work”? :-)

There are apparently a lot of possible setups, and some of these I’m not an expert on and it looks like you’ve stumbled on a scenario that may have some issues.

I only use “portable” versions of Notepad++, so some others would have to comment on installed versions. Using only portable, editing the localization files and getting the program to recognize them has never presented any problem for me. But that’s all I can say.

[Victorel Petrovich]

I also should have been more specific than:

@guy038 doesn’t work anymore… Tried both deleting and moving a bit that & thing.

I guess I should submit an issue on github. Or maybe wait till somebody else confirms it, with Installer version.

[Alan Kilborn]

@Victorel-Petrovich said in Disable menu activation for a shortcut.:

Or maybe wait till somebody else…

Unless I miss my guess you will hear from @PeterJones real soon about it.

[PeterJones]

@Victorel-Petrovich said in Disable menu activation for a shortcut.:

maybe wait till somebody else confirms it,

I can confirm: if I do not have c:\program files\notepad++\localization directory but do have %AppData%\Notepad++\localization with english.xml and english_customizable.xml, when I start Notepad++ and check the Settings > Preferences > Localization, I cannot see any languages available.

I should submit an issue on github

If you do, please paste a link to the issue you create in this discussion, so that other interested users can find out the results of your issue. I personally am interested in whether the developers say “it’s always meant to be this way” (in which case, I need to update the documentation, because localization\ wasn’t in the list of directories that I knew were only meant to work in the <install_directory>)

[Victorel Petrovich]

@PeterJones
https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/issues/13932

[Tim Pronin]

Thank God there is someone else who cares about this problem.
The most annoying thing is when they start convincing you that the problem is with you, in Windows or somewhere else.
The problem is only in Notepad, nowhere else. This really interferes with the nominal work.

[notdodgeball]

Continuing the trend of the user is actually the problem, I have several custom Alt+something shortcuts and the menu bar options don’t interfere with them at all.

It gets better, if I let go of the Alt key and then press the letter I can still use the menu bar shortcuts normally, as if I had pressed the F10 key to bring the focus to the menu bar, which would be my fallback option anyway.