Missing Plugins menu

[richhock]

I installed Notepad++ 7.6 on my Windows 10 tablet, and the Plugins menu is missing. I thought maybe it had been moved in 7.6, but I see it on 7.6 on other computers. So what is special about my configuration that would cause Plugins to not show up? I have uninstalled and reinstalled, that didn’t help. I switched from 32-bit to 64-bit, and that didn’t help.

[richhock]

Another bit of data–I created another user on my table and ran notepad++ there, and I did get the Plugins menu. So it is something isolated to one particular user.

Back to my original Windows user, I found the directories %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%\AppData\Roaming\Notepad++ and %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%\AppData\Local\Notepad++ and renamed them. Notepad++ dutifully recreated new directories in their place but did not restore the Plugins menu.

[dinkumoil]

@richhock said:

So what is special about my configuration that would cause Plugins to not show up?

You gave us only some small hints (Npp v7.6 on Win 10 tablet) about your configuration, so we can not answer this question.

Please provide some additional infos:

1. Do you use a portable installation or did you use the installer to update Notepad++ to v7.6?
2. Did you use the option “Don’t use %APPDATA%” during installation?
3. Do you work normally with a restricted user account and thus you had to install Notepad++ using username & password of an administrative account?

[richhock]

Sorry, you mention options that I don’t normally think about.

I used the installer to update to Notepad++ 7.6. I just tried a zipped-up stand-alone copy of Notepad++ 7.6, both 32-bit and 64-bit, and they both show the Plugins menu.

I used the default for “Don’t use %APPDATA%”, which (I see when running the installer again) is unchecked.

I installed it as a “Standard” Windows user, not an “Administrator”. When I ran the installer, UAC asked me to type the administrator password to go into Administrator mode, as most installers do.

I hope these give enough additional hints to discover the cause of the problem.

[dinkumoil]

@richhock said:

When I ran the installer, UAC asked me to type the administrator password to go into Administrator mode

That’s the reason for your issue. Your plugins and, most important, the DLL file with the list of available plugins has been installed to the user profile of the admin user whose credentials you used to authenticate in the UAC dialog.

The developer of Notepad++ is already working on a changed behaviour of Notepad++. The next release will install plugins and the plugin list to %ProgramData% where all users can access them.

To solve your problem you have to copy the files under <user-profile-of-admin-user>\AppData\Local\Notepad++\plugins to the equivalent directory of your normal user account.

To get back your old plugins you have to copy the plugin DLL files from <Npp-install-dir>\plugins to your-normal-user-profile>\AppData\Local\Notepad++\plugins\<plugin-name>. Please note: Every plugin needs its own directory which has to be named exactly like the plugin DLL file, excluding the .dll extension.

Additionally you have to copy all files and directories related to a plugin to your-normal-user-profile>\AppData\Local\Notepad++\plugins\<plugin-name> as well. It is important that you create a directory your-normal-user-profile>\AppData\Local\Notepad++\plugins\<plugin-name>\doc in case there are files to copy from <Npp-install-dir>\plugins\doc.

But it is still not guaranteed that all plugins will function properly after doing that, it depends on how a plugin assembles the access paths to its companion files. You have to play around with every plugin to test if everything is working properly. If you find a regression (e.g. help or manual doesn’t open, missing icons, errors when starting Notepad++ mentioning a special plugin) try to copy back the related files/directories to their original location under <Npp-install-dir>\plugins or <Npp-install-dir>\plugins\doc. Additionally you should contact the plugin author to request an update that adopts the new plugin hosting model of Notepad++.

[richhock]

@dinkumoil - Thanks for the info. That got me the Plugins menu back with entries for all my plugins. I’ll try them out as you suggest to make sure they work in my Standard User mode.

One thing still missing is the entry for the new Plugin Admin. It shows up if I run Notepad++ as Administrator, but not in Standard User mode. Will the Plugin Admin be available in Standard User mode in future versions, as it used to be back when it was itself a plugin?

[dinkumoil]

@richhock said:

One thing still missing is the entry for the new Plugin Admin.

Sorry, I forgot to mention where the plugin list gets stored. Look under <user-profile-of-admin-user>\AppData\Roaming\Notepad++\config for the file nppPluginList.dll and move it to the equivalent directory of your normal user profile. Thereafter Plugin Admin should be available.

Now you could try updating non-functional plugins.

[dinkumoil]

@richhock

Sorry, I’ve posted a wrong path above. It should be <user-profile-of-admin-user>\AppData\Roaming\Notepad++\plugins\config.

[richhock]

Thanks, it all works now!