Plugins disappear after upgrading to 7.6.2

Rolf Haardoerfer

Hi,

I have to move to a new laptop (Windows 10 64x) and needed to reinstall Notepad++. I downloaded and installed the latest 32-bit Notepad++ application (7.6.2), the latest plugin manager and the Poor Man’s SQL formatter. I have installed the plugin through the plugin manager or manually but can’t see it under the Plugin menu.

I spend some more time on this and decided to uninstall Notepad ++ 7.6.2 and downgraded to 7.5.4. I installed the SQL plugin manually and it showed up in the plugin menu. Then I upgraded Notepad ++ to 7.5.9 and the plugin was still visible. After upgrading to 7.6.2 and the new plugin manager the Poor man’s SQL plugin disappeared from the menu. The plugin manager still shows it as installed. Reinstalling the plugin won’t make it appear again.

rinku singh

@Rolf-Haardoerfer said:

I have installed the plugin through the plugin manager or manually but can’t see it under the Plugin menu.

C:\ProgramData\Notepad++\plugins\PoorMansTSqlFormatterNppPlugin\PoorMansTSqlFormatterNppPlugin.dll

Meta Chuh

welcome to the notepad++ community @Rolf-Haardoerfer

the folder locations have changed since notepad++ 7.6.x and a separate folder for every plugin is needed.

plugin manager is not supported and has not been updated by the author, you will have to use the built in “plugins admin” to install plugins

for plugins that have to be installed manually, or that already exist on your machine, you will just have to move them to:
%PROGRAMDATA%\Notepad++\plugins\PluginName\PluginName.dll

mikhoul

Same problem here I “lost” all my plugins:

I can’t move my plugin to “%PROGRAMDATA%\Notepad++\PluginName\PluginName.dll”

Since this folder don’t exist on my computer because when I install Notepad with the option to install everything in the progam folder which is “K:\NotepadPlusUnicode\plugins” on my computer.

Screenshot of my folders structure, everything is inside this folder and all my plugins have always been inside the plugins folder: https://i.imgur.com/CIC9Bbn.png

Here’s a screenshot of the inside of my “plugins” folder: https://i.imgur.com/iDx7SgC.png

So what I’ve had to do to recover my plugin now ?

Meta Chuh

@mikhoul

you are using the portable version, not the installed version.
(doLocalConf.xml is present)

so everything is in K:\NotepadPlusUnicode\plugins and not in %PROGRAMDATA%.

lets take an example with your ComparePlugin in K:\NotepadPlusUnicode\plugins\ComparePlugin.dll:

first you have to create a new folder K:\NotepadPlusUnicode\plugins\New
then move ComparePlugin.dll into K:\NotepadPlusUnicode\plugins\New
then move the folder ComparePlugin into K:\NotepadPlusUnicode\plugins\New
finally rename New to ComparePlugin
so your folder will look like this: K:\NotepadPlusUnicode\plugins\ComparePlugin
containing the original ComparePlugin folder and your ComparePlugin.dll

note: it might be easier for you if you use the built in “plugins admin” of notepad portable version 7.6.2 or higher to install all plugins that are currently supported, so you only have to manually move the plugins that are not listed in plugins admin yet.

mikhoul

Thanks for your help @Meta-Chuh ,

I have 2 more questions:

What I do with plugins that don’t have already a folder ? I can choose any arbitrary name for the folder name ?

Also I’d like to know if the “settings” in the “plugins/config” folder will be used. I have a lot of custom settings for my plugins and I don’t remember all of them but I need those settings to be used.

Regards.

Meta Chuh

@mikhoul

What I do with plugins that don’t have already a folder ?

for plugins like CustomizeToolbar.dll that don’t have an extra folder with additional files, you don’t need to create any second sub folder for it.

in this example you can create a folder called ComparePlugin directly and move
K:\NotepadPlusUnicode\plugins\ComparePlugin.dll
to
K:\NotepadPlusUnicode\plugins\ComparePlugin\ComparePlugin.dll

note:
the name of the folder has always to be the same name as the plugin.dll but without the .dll extension

Also I’d like to know if the “settings” in the “plugins/config” folder will be used. I have a lot of custom settings for my plugins and I don’t remember all of them but I need those settings to be used.

it depends if the plugin has this path hardcoded as absolute or relative to the position of it’s dll.
for some of them you will have to create an extra Config folder inside its new plugin folder and move the needed files there:
K:\NotepadPlusUnicode\plugins\MyPlugin\Config\...
for others you can leave it where it is.

mikhoul

@Meta-Chuh Thanks a lot it make lot of senses this way I will be able to keep my precious setting especially the on’es for the automatic back-up !