After this conversation, I worked briefly on a workaround. I took the 16x16 standard-icon BMP files from the N++ source code, converted them to ICO format, then on all the files, I used an image program to upscale from 16x16 to 32x32, and make .ico files that have both 16x16 and 32x32 resolution files. The 32x32 are admittedly ugly (because they are just enlarged versions of the 16x16), but it’s at least a starting place, and will give the ability to have icons that are based on the standard icon set, but being able to use them in large-icon mode.

Assuming a standard installation of Notepad++ (using %AppData% config directory), to use these dual-resolution ICO files:

Go to %AppData%\Notepad++\ in Windows Explorer Create a directory toolbarIcons and a subdirectory toolbarIcons\StandardDualResolution Download the .ico files in https://github.com/pryrt/nppStuff/tree/main/StandardIconUpscaling/GIMP DualResolution 32x32 16x16 and unzip into toolbarIcons\StandardDualResolution\ update: added zipfile for easy download Rename toolbarButtonsConf_example.xml to toolbarButtonsConf.xml Edit that file, and near the end, change the line from <ToolBarIcons icoFolderName="" /> to <ToolBarIcons icoFolderName="StandardDualResolution" /> Save the toolbarButtonsConf.xml exit Notepad++

The next time you run Notepad++, it should be using the custom versions of the standard icons. If you select Settings > Preferences > Toolbar and choose one of the “large” choices, it should use the custom icons in large (32x32).

5ef248da-6716-4e80-a474-4147eb20d515-image.png

This is obviously not ideal. But since there hasn’t been any official or publically-available 32x32 “originals” of those icons in 14+ years, that I can find, it’s the best thing I can think of for now. Someone with more image editing skill – or more AI skill – might be able to generate better 32x32 versions from the original 16x16 BMP files in the source code and create better-looking versions as ICO files. But until such happens, this might be a usable workaround.

A few months ago, I said,

I don’t know of anyone who has done that and made them public.

After this conversation, I worked briefly on a workaround. I took the 16x16 standard-icon BMP files from the N++ source code, converted them to ICO format, then on all the files, I used an image program to upscale from 16x16 to 32x32, and make .ico files that have both 16x16 and 32x32 resolution files. The 32x32 are admittedly ugly (because they are just enlarged versions of the 16x16), but it’s at least a starting place, and will give the ability to have icons that are based on the standard icon set, but being able to use them in large-icon mode.

Assuming a standard installation of Notepad++ (using %AppData% config directory), to use these dual-resolution ICO files:

Go to %AppData%\Notepad++\ in Windows Explorer Create a directory toolbarIcons and a subdirectory toolbarIcons\StandardDualResolution Download the .ico files in https://github.com/pryrt/nppStuff/tree/main/StandardIconUpscaling/GIMP DualResolution 32x32 16x16 and unzip into toolbarIcons\StandardDualResolution\ update: added zipfile for easy download Rename toolbarButtonsConf_example.xml to toolbarButtonsConf.xml Edit that file, and near the end, change the line from <ToolBarIcons icoFolderName="" /> to <ToolBarIcons icoFolderName="StandardDualResolution" /> Save the toolbarButtonsConf.xml exit Notepad++

The next time you run Notepad++, it should be using the custom versions of the standard icons. If you select Settings > Preferences > Toolbar and choose one of the “large” choices, it should use the custom icons in large (32x32).

5ef248da-6716-4e80-a474-4147eb20d515-image.png

This is obviously not ideal. But since there hasn’t been any official or publically-available 32x32 “originals” of those icons in 14+ years, that I can find, it’s the best thing I can think of for now. Someone with more image editing skill – or more AI skill – might be able to generate better 32x32 versions from the original 16x16 BMP files in the source code and create better-looking versions as ICO files. But until such happens, this might be a usable workaround.

@PATRICK-MULOT

This is probably a job for regular expressions, but it depends to some extent on the specifics of your task.

If you have a text file where every line is a word that you need to search for, you need to do a scripting solution. This kind of question has been asked many times before on the forum and I’m too lazy to look up which posts it was answered in, but a PythonScript script that would accomplish this would probably be as follows:

Open the file with the words you’re searching for (hereafter WORD_FILE) Open the PythonScript console Paste in the command words = [x + ' ' for x in editor.getText().splitlines()] then hit Enter. Open the file that you want to search in (hereafter TARGET_FILE) Paste in the command lines = [line for line in editor.getText().splitlines() if any(line.startswith(word) for word in words)] then hit Enter Open a new file. Paste in the command editor.setText('\r\n'.join(lines)) and hit Enter Your new file will contain only the lines in TARGET_FILE that started with one of the words in WORD_FILE followed by a literal space character

If you want to find lines that start with "fam " or "blah " (as in “fam” or “blah” followed by a literal space character), you can do that by:

Use Search->Find... from the Notepad++ main menu (Ctrl+F with default keybindings) to open the Find form. Set Search Mode to Regular expression. Set Find what: to (?-i)^(?:fam|blah)\x20.* This regular expression has these basic parts: (?-i), ^, (?:fam|blah), \x20, and .* The (?-i) says that this is a case-sensitive search (so it would exclude lines starting with FAM for example) The ^ means that we only search at the start of a line The (?:fam|blah) matches fam or blah The \x20 is a different representation of a normal space character, which I sometimes use in regular expressions to make it more readable The .* matches the rest of the line (. is any non-newline character and * means match 0 or more of the preceding pattern) Hit the Find All in Current Document button. A form will pop up at the bottom of the Notepad++ window showing all the lines that matched.

@guy038 Thanx much for your help

@Bartosz-Graczyk

https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/topic/15741/faq-feature-request-or-bug-report

Create a GitHub issue for it, I’ll try to check it.

@rdipardo

But what if the given document is not UTF8, but ANSI or UTF-16?

I’ve finally gotten around to implementing a fix for this issue in JsonTools. I did this first in JsonTools because it has a lot of features that read the text of the file. It appears to work fine for ANSI files (you can test it on this example file I added).

As I noted in the commit message, there are some features that are broken because my JSON parser’s code for determining node position assumes that the document is UTF8-encoded.

…or UTF-16?

JsonTools has always worked correctly on files with any encoding except ANSI, so at least on my machine, I have just confirmed that Notepad++ internally represents documents as UTF-8 if the file itself is in UTF-16 or some exotic encoding like OEM 865.

@Coises Thanks, it was the smart highlighting. Problem solved.

To expand on the explanation, for a small number of lines, put the caret in column 1 of line 1. Press Shift+Alt+DownArrow multiple times, enough so that a “skinny but tall caret” appears before the column 1 data in all lines, to wit:

25400676-feb5-4a56-86ab-a9413176e83c-image.png

Then press Space two times, to obtain:

f0784327-74d1-4788-8da2-7c1acf2b63f7-image.png

@User-Name said in JsonTools v5.5. is live!:

And then if I open any file, it opens formatted.

Glad to hear it!

But the first opened file is not formatted :)

That’s probably just a limitation of how PythonScript is implemented, and I don’t think there’s anything I can do about that.

I made an issue of this bug: https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/issues/16879

@guy038 @PeterJones

I have checked the Registry Entries as requested:

If your system doesn’t have MS Shell Dlg (or 2) installed, or even if it does, you might also want to look in your registry at HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontSubstitutes and see if MS Shell Dlg (or … 2) has an entry (for mine, those two have entries set to MS Sans Serif and Tahoma, respectively). If there is a FontSubstitutes entry set up on your computer, then you need to check that the resulting font exists in your c:\windows\fonts\ or equivalent directory. If not, then I have no idea what font that Windows OS will choose for that text.

Regex.png

Then checked the fonts:

Screenshot 2025-07-27 165307.png

I highlighted the 2 fonts, MS Sans Serif is named MS Sans Serif Regular but I think this is ok.

I then checked my wife’s laptop, HP Firefly with Win 11 24H2 and Notepad++ is perfect. I gather it must be a graphics setting on my machine as I am having endless driver issues. I also read up a lot on this topic and it seems like it has something to do with scaling (not 100% sure here).

Anyway, I apologize for this thread as I think this is an isolated incident on this specific laptop.

The resolution is 3840 x 2400
Scale : 250% (Recommended)

@Раке if you still prefer using a Regex-based Search and Replace, you can add a Start of Line anchor (and perhaps the whitespace character class with a quantifier) to get similar results. For example, a search of ^\s*\r\n will remove all “empty” lines, including ones with various types of whitespace.

Sample start text:

c8db255e-b5b8-4d9d-b85c-db4da28525d5-image.png

After running the S/R with the above Regex:

a6fef303-5305-4289-9f25-8f4ebfd36ff9-image.png

@PeterJones Thank you.

@PeterJones Very much appreciate this, you saved me a lot of time

@Paul-Leo Thanks, and sorry about missing the FAQ re: npp crashes after update/upgrade!

@Ivan-Garnizov said in Macros to find foward the next character:

the question refers to your source of information,
Where do you find and most importantly interpret these codes?

My source of information is the User Manual and the Notepad++ source code, both of which are publically available.

User Manual: Generic info on macros = https://npp-user-manual.org/docs/macros/ User Manual: Details on the macro syntax in the shortcuts.xml file = https://npp-user-manual.org/docs/config-files/#macros Source Code: Values for the message="###" on the type="0" and type="1" commands = https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/blob/master/scintilla/include/Scintilla.h Each of those command names (with their numbers) listed in Scintila.h is documented by the Scintilla project = https://scintilla.org/ScintillaDoc.html Source Code: Values for the wParam="###" on the type="2" commands = https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/blob/master/PowerEditor/src/menuCmdID.h The menuCmdID.h was not intended primarily for human-readability, so here is an example cheat sheet for how to read it: If we wanted to look up the Search > Select and Find Next, and already knew it was IDM_SEARCH_SETANDFINDNEXT:#define IDM_SEARCH_SETANDFINDNEXT (IDM_SEARCH + 48) That says that IDM_SEARCH_SETANDFINDNEXT is defined as the value of IDM_SEARCH + 48. So then you look for IDM_SEARCH:#define IDM_SEARCH (IDM + 3000) So that means that IDM_SEARCH_SETANDFINDNEXT is IDM + 3000 + 48 = IDM + 3048. Looking for the definition of IDM:#define IDM 40000 So that means that IDM_SEARCH_SETANDFINDNEXT is 40000 + 3000 + 48 = 43048 But that required knowing beforehand what the internal IDM_XYZ name for the menu-command was that you wanted was. There are two good ways for finding that: In the menuCmdID.h, it is mostly organized by Notepad++ menu, so it’s not that hard to say “I want the Find (Volatile) Next command from the Search menu”, and then to look in menuCmdID.h for the Search menu entries – they start here at IDM_SEARCH, which isn’t that hard to find (for example, look in the file for SEARCH, which is the name of the menu). Once in the right section, the IDM_<section>_<command_name> is reasonably easy to map to the entries in the default English menu system in Notepad++. But that’s still a bit of effort. I make use of the NppUISpy plugin (installed from Plugins Admin), which allows you to look up what the command ID (and thus wParam="###" value) is for every built-in and currently-installed plugin command is. Once you know the ID, you can use it directly. But you can also look up the IDM_xyz name by looking for the last digit or two, and finding the ones that end in that last digit until the name makes sense for the given menu command. This Forum’s FAQs: Automating Notepad++ = https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/topic/25400/faq-automating-notepad This has a lot about macros, and how to dig in to find even the right menu command IDs for plugin commands (plugin commands are not recordable, but the FAQ explains how to hack the recorded macro to run plugin commands with certain limitation)

@deleelee , there is no published reference of which commands aren’t recordable – there are thousands of commands, and it’s hard to piece together the information(*). The general rule is “any command that requires user input (launches a dialog, renames a file, etc) cannot be recorded or played back; any other built-in command that can be accessed through a menu can at least be played back by a macro, though an arbitrary list of them cannot be recorded even though they can be played back; almost any normal ‘editing’ command, like copy/paste/select etc, which are handled by the scintilla component, should be recordable”. As the Automating Notepad++ FAQ explains, there is no list of which commands are specifically recordable vs not. Essentially, my recommendation is to try to record a macro, and then see if there are any commands (like the Search > Select and Find Next) that don’t end up with a corresponding entry in the macro; those are usually the commands that aren’t macro-recordable. ;-)

(*: when I was writing up the FAQ, I tried to create a list of not-recordable-but-playable based on the source code, but I gave up after a few hours of spinning my wheels on that. It’s not a simple task.)

@PeterJones I just registered an account to say thank you for mentioning what specific version changed the location of this setting. I came to this thread wondering where to change tabs to spaces. I knew there was a setting somewhere, I just couldn’t remember where, and apparently I must have missed that autoupdate for whatever reason (I don’t remember disabling auto updates but nonetheless I was outdated by a few minor versions), so knowing the setting got moved between versions, and particularly what version, was helpful.

ConfigUpdater Plugin v2.2.1

ConfigUpdater Plugin has released v2.2.1, available thru GitHub release page, with bugfix improvements, mostly to Validation Dialog:

Error handling for null handle ⇒ to prevent potential crashes Disable logfile Monitoring Mode ⇒ it triggers callbacks for many file-changed events, which can bog down setups that use plugins/scripts that add many callbacks Fix progress bar on ConfigUpdater dialog ⇒ makes more-visible progress as each file is processed ValidationDialog: say Line#123 instead of #123 in the Validation dialog error list ⇒ Makes it more clear to the user that the number is the line number, not just some internal tracking number ValidationDialog: Rename Done -> Close ValidationDialog: Rename Go to Model -> Open/Align Model in Other View ValidationDialog: Disabled Validate button when no file selected ValidationDialog: Add ephemeral “Please select a file to validate” choice as initially-selected “file” for validation, which will go away once you’ve made a choice ValidationDialog: Open/Align Model now allows opening the model even when there are no validation errors (or when you haven’t even validated yet) it was previously not allowed because the vector it was looking at to find which line number in model-file was 0-length if there were no errors (or no validation done yet); I was able to update the logic to choose line 0 if there was no selection or no validation errors Update langs.xsd to check for duplicate <Keyword name="xyz"> entries NOTE: if you want this feature, you have to delete the old ...\plugins\config\ConfigUpdater\langs.xsd before launching the ConfigUpdater or ValidateConfigFiles dialogs (only need to delete the file once; after it is regenerated, the new error checking will be available in the future) Only allow one Validator dialog ⇒ It could cause problems if more than one dialog were trying to validate at the same time, and there is no compelling reason for allowing multiple instances of that dialog