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    I broke it! I can't get Notepad ++ to display/search word documents

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    • Teri S. SoftleyT
      Teri S. Softley
      last edited by

      I don’t know what I did but I can’t get it to work with word documents. It works fine with .txt files or .sql but not .doc or .docx. It used to work with word documents, then one day it didn’t. I have uninstalled, re-installed several times/versions with different options. When I open a word document I get a bunch of unrecognizable characters. Did I somehow change the encoding or language? How do I fix it?

      Also, is it supposed to work with .pdf files that were scanned with OCR? I can’t get it to search or open a .pdf file.

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      • dailD
        dail
        last edited by

        but not .doc or .docx.

        These aren’t made to be edited with a text editor. (The docx format is actually just a zip file FYI)

        It used to work with word documents

        No clue how that worked.

        I get a bunch of unrecognizable characters

        That’s because it is binary data and not text.

        is it supposed to work with .pdf files

        No. Again these are binary files. Not text.

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        • Teri S. SoftleyT
          Teri S. Softley
          last edited by

          Thanks for the reply. When I first installed it (Dec 2014- Jan 2015), I used the Find in Files and Replace to update a name change in 200+ .docx documents. It worked great and saved me a huge amount of time. Then the next time I tried to use it, it didn’t work. Would you happen to know which version would have been current between December 2014 and Jan 2015?

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          • dailD
            dail
            last edited by

            I guess I should state that you can do find/replaces on those files but I’d highly recommend creating backups. In theory you could easily corrupt the files.

            There have been some reports that people are having trouble with find/replace, not sure if it’s actually a problem or there is a fix or what. Try doing a test by doing find in files on some other types of files to see if it is specific to the word documents or not.

            Would you happen to know which version would have been current between December 2014 and Jan 2015?

            No clue. Can probably look at the N++ website.

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            • Teri S. SoftleyT
              Teri S. Softley
              last edited by

              Find in files and replace seems to work on text files but not word documents. I don’t know how it worked before. I will check the other posts to see if maybe there is a solution for the find and replace.

              I figured out how to find the release dates of previous versions.

              Thanks.

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