Macro not working incrementally in Windows 10/Server 2012

David Price

I’ve been having issues with some macros only working intermittently since transitioning to Windows 10. I’ve noticed that it’s occurring in Server 2012 as well. I believe I noticed it in the latter versions of Notepad++ (6.9).

It appears that the issue is occurring when using copy/paste (Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V) in the macro.

For example, if I have a list of documents with date/time stamps appended to them:

2016900000011.txt.201610190800
2016900000012.txt.201610190800
2016900000013.txt.201610190800
2016900000014.txt.201610190800
2016900000015.txt.201610190800

If I record a macro that cuts the date/time stamp from the end and pastes it to the beginning of the line, I get this:

201610190800.2016900000011.txt
201610190800.2016900000012.txt
2016900000013.txt
201610190800.2016900000014.txt
201610190800.2016900000015.txt

It’s as if it’s losing the copied content in the clipboard at times.

Anyone else been experiencing this in Windows 10/Server 2012 or in latter versions of Notepad++?

guy038

Hello David,

I can’t offer you any help about Windows 10 / Server 2012 as I, currently work with an old Win XP SP3 version ! Yes, I know, I’m a kind of dinosaur ;-))

However,for basic changes of text, in a file, as yours, it would be quicker and more powerful to use regular expressions to do the job ! Moreover, the macro creating phase would become useless !

For instance, once your file is opened in N++, with the cursor located line 1 and column 1 of your list :

Open the Find/replace dialog ( Ctrl + H )
Type , in the Find What : zone, the regex ^(\h*)(.+)\.(.+)
Type, in the Replace with zone, the regex \1\3 \2, with 3 spaces between \3 and \2
Select, at the bottom, the Regular expression search mode ( IMPORTANT )
Uncheck, if necessary, the . matches new line` option ( IMPORTANT )
Finally, click on the Replace All button

Et voilà ! Done :-)

So, from your original text, below :

2016900000011.txt.201610190800
2016900000012.txt.201610190800
2016900000013.txt.201610190800
2016900000014.txt.201610190800
2016900000015.txt.201610190800

we get the modified text, below :

201610190800   2016900000011.txt
201610190800   2016900000012.txt
201610190800   2016900000013.txt
201610190800   2016900000014.txt
201610190800   2016900000015.txt

Now, just imagine that :

Your text has leading spaces or tabulations, before the name of the files, like below :

          2016900000011.txt.201610190800
          2016900000012.txt.201610190800
  		2016900000013.txt.201610190800
          2016900000014.txt.201610190800
  		2016900000015.txt.201610190800

with lines 1, 2 and 4 which begin with 12 space characters and lines 3 and 5 which begin with 3 tabulation characters

You write, this time, in the Replace with zone, the regex \1\3 is the DATE/TIME stamps of the FILE \2

Then, after performing this S/R, you should get the text below :

            201610190800 is the DATE/TIME stamps of the FILE 2016900000011.txt
            201610190800 is the DATE/TIME stamps of the FILE 2016900000012.txt
			201610190800 is the DATE/TIME stamps of the FILE 2016900000013.txt
            201610190800 is the DATE/TIME stamps of the FILE 2016900000014.txt
			201610190800 is the DATE/TIME stamps of the FILE 2016900000015.txt

Notes, on that second S/R :

The first part of the search regex, (\h*), inside round brackets, memorize the leading blank characters, of the current line, as group 1
Then, the middle part (.+)\. memorize, as group 2, the complete name of the file, of the current line, as it catches the longest string till the dot character ( located between the names and the date/time stamps ). The dot, itself, must be escaped to be taken literally, as it’s a special symbol, in regular expressions.
Finally, the end part (.+) memorize, as group 3, the date/time stamps, of the current line, as it catches all the remaining characters till the EOL characters, excluded
The first part of the replacement string \1\3 rewrites the indentation of the current line, followed by the date/time stamps
Then, the part is the DATE/TIME stamps of the FILE is simple text to be inserted, with that exact case, after the date/time stamps
Finally the part \2 rewrites the name of the current file

Best Regards

guy038

David Price

Thank you so much guy038.

I use regex for find/replace frequently, but didn’t consider using it for this. I’m sometimes working with more than 1 million lines of file lists, and macros usually worked well, but regex could produce quicker output results.

Another time I’d use macros, which I don’t think this regex method will work on, is copying the file’s name into the text.

For example, if the text is:

2016900000011.txt.201610190800

…and the file containing the text is test.txt. Using Edit -> ‘Copy to Clipboard -> Current Filename to Clipboard’ in the macro, the output would be:

test.txt\2016900000011.txt.201610190800

I guess I can perhaps try accomplishing this when creating the directory lists from a command line.

Thanks again for your detailed feedback!