Why does removing CR work correctly for me and not for co-worker

Phyllis Fulton

We use Notepad++ to remove CR from long columns of numbers that have both CR and LF at the end of each number. We’ve been doing it for years, and Notepad++ does it beautifully. It now falls to me to teach someone else how to do it. I have watched her do it over and over, and everything seems perfect until when she opens the new .txt file in regular Notepad. Without the CR, it should just be a long string of numbers, but hers is still in a column. However, if she emails the file to me and I open it on my computer, it is in proper format – a long string of numbers.

If she opens the file in Notepad++ again, the CRs have returned. If I open the file in Notepad++, there are no CRs.

We are not in the same physical location, so I can only watch via shared screen. I have watched carefully to make sure she is sending me the same file she is working with and have made her create unique names so we can be doubly sure. I have checked to make sure our settings in Notepad++ and in Notepad (such as they are) are the same.

Does anyone have any ideas on this?

Alan Kilborn

@Phyllis-Fulton said in Why does removing CR work correctly for me and not for co-worker:

remove CR from long columns of numbers that have both CR and LF at the end

How do you do this removal? It sounds like (although I can’t be 100% sure from your explanation) what you really should be doing is an end-of-line conversion operation from Windows to Linux files. The easiest way to accomplish this is to double-click where it says Windows (CR LF) on the status bar and changing the selection to Unix (LF).

But…I truly suspect there is more to the original explanation of what you’re doing…

Alan Kilborn

@Phyllis-Fulton :

Another thought: Do you and your coworker do what you do (whatever exactly that is!) with visible line-endings turned on? If not, it might help. See View menu, then Show Symbol, then tick Show End of Line.

Phyllis Fulton

That’s exactly what we’re doing: changing Windows (CR LF) to Unix (LF) with visible line-endings turned on. One can see that the CRs go away and only the LFs are left.

We always double-check it afterward by opening the file in regular Notepad because it’s written in our Standard Operating Procedure – someone, some time in the past, had a problem, but they did not document the problem. They only documented that you needed to check to be sure the conversion “took.” (Very helpful, thank you, person in the past).

Thank you for looking at our problem. It’s baffling.