Style colouring/coloring issues

Wayne Ivory

I started using Notepad++ as my editor of choice about 3 months ago and often have many documents open, not necessarily of the same type. For some reason when I open documents the default style doesn’t get applied, the document just appears as plain text and I must choose the language manually to get the syntax colouring.

But even more annoying, if I shift focus to another document then come back the colours are “scrambled”. They are not reset to plain text but rather some other set of colours. The “other” set of colours applied is consistent and is also distinct for each type of document.

Below are two before-and-after examples, a .xml document and a .bat file:

Examples

I’ve searched the Community here for what must be something basic I’m missing, but the topics I found are typically dealing with more advanced issues.

Thanks

Wayne

Notepad++ v7.4.2 (32-bit)
Build time : Jun 18 2017 - 23:34:19
Path : C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\notepad++.exe
Admin mode : OFF
Local Conf mode : OFF
OS : Windows 7 (64-bit)
Plugins : ComparePlugin.dll mimeTools.dll NppConverter.dll NppExport.dll PluginManager.dll SQLinFormNpp.dll XMLTools.dll

Claudia Frank

@Wayne-Ivory

stop npp, rename the notepad++ directory from %APPDATA% and restart npp.
Does this solve the issue?

Cheers
Claudia

Wayne Ivory

Thanks for your response Claudia. Unfortunately I’m not sure I understand what you mean.

If I go to a DOS prompt and type the “set” command it tells me “APPDATA=C:\Users\waynei\AppData\Roaming”. If I look at the Properties of the Notepad++ shortcut in Windows it tells me the Target is ““C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\notepad++.exe”” and the Start-in folder is ““C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++””.

Is this what you were referring to?

Thanks

Wayne

Claudia Frank

@Wayne-Ivory

If you type %APPDATA% in the explorer (or press win key +r and type %APPDATA%) it should open, in your case, C:\Users\waynei\AppData\Roaming. Within this directory your should see a Notepad++ directory which you should rename.
This directory holds the user specific configuration, by renaming it, notepad++ will recreate these files during startup. This is to find out if a corrupted configuration file causes this issue.

Cheers
Claudia

Wayne Ivory

Great, that worked!

Out of interest I compared the before-and-after config.xml files but didn’t see any differences I wouldn’t expect to see: History, FindHistory, nextUpdateDate and DockingManager.

Thanks Claudia.

Wayne

Claudia Frank

@Wayne-Ivory

Hi Wayne,

Out of interest I compared the before-and-after config.xml files but didn’t see any differences

it could be any of the xml files. If you still have the files and you are interested to find out which
one and what caused the issue you need to compare them all but good to see that it is working
again.

Cheers
Claudia