You think multiple instances would impact it?

Yes, I think it could. Each instance shares the same settings, and the instance you close LAST will write the settings.

So say you have 2 instances open, call them A and B. If you go into instance A’s settings and you turn off the tool bar, instance A’s tool bar will (obviously) not be shown but instance B will still have a tool bar.

If you then quit instance A and then quit instance B and then restart Notepad++, what you get will have a tool bar.

However, if you had quit instance B and then quit instance A and then restarted, what you get will NOT have a tool bar.

I don’t think the automatic session management stuff works the same way as a setting like the tool bar, at least a quick test didn’t show that it did, but…

I avoid this sort of multi-instance running myself, for these types of reasons.

At most I ever want/need is one additional instance, so I have a secondary portable version of Notepad++ hanging around for just such a need. I have a Run menu item set up to run this secondary instance from my main instance. Since both instances have totally different settings and sessions, I don’t have any problems. Such a setup is convenient for me, but I recognize that it isn’t necessarily convenient for everyone.

Downvoting because you are clearly spreading misinformation; totally unrelated to anything discussed above.

Can anyone advice what is going on here?

https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/topic/19151/session-bug-in-v7-8-5

Also, do you use multiple instances of N++?

Yes, each session would be loaded in a separate instance, plus I might have another instance open that isn’t a session, each instance would have multiple files in it, usually I have 2-4 instances and while I might only have 1-3 files open in an instance that doesn’t have a session loaded, there would be anything from 10-30 files in a session. It varies, it depends what I’m doing and what sessions I need on hand at the time. I do try not to have 5 or more instances running but some of the sessions do have rather a lot of files in them.

The issue definitely happened to specific sessions rather than different ones at different times, this is why I didn’t think it was a bug… one of my sessions that I keep open almost constantly would always overwrite the session file but another one never overwrote the file, it didn’t matter if I had multiple instances or if that was the only one, granted I have a lot of session files and I can’t swear blind all of them were consistent but those two are in frequent, near constant use and I know one of them always worked and one never did.

You think multiple instances would impact it? Or you think I am overloading my system and it wasn’t coping? While I admit I am not always kind to my systems resources (this is mainly cause I am bad at leaving browser tabs open), one of the last things I do before a reboot is save my NP++ files and session, this is cause as I close things I add links/notes to remind me to do/finish this and that when I get back… given I have closed everything else at this point there should be plenty of system resources available.

Bah, this is annoying… I will try my other machine, it’s been a while since I used it but I’m pretty sure it happens on that too (if it didn’t I would have known it was a buggy install and I would have tried reinstalling, I might be lazy but I’m not that bad ;), that is also running Win 10 64 bit and NP++ 32 bit.

Well, I guess good that it seems to be working for you now, but bad for looking deeper into the why of the not-ideal situation you had before.

I just don’t get how some sessions are behaving differently to others.

However, I’m a bit miffed now as the 64 bit version seems to be working as I would expect… not that I am complaining that it’s working but this has been bugging me for ages (wouldn’t have posted otherwise).

Question now is, is it a bug with the 32 bit version or was it just a bug because I needed to do a fresh install (it has been a while since I did that, see aforementioned lazyness ;), although I didn’t do a clean install, it kept my preferences etc. I probably should have tried a fresh install before posting, it just seemed like there was some secret/hidden preferences file for the individual sessions rather than a buggy install :/

Perhaps I will reinstall the 32 bit version and see if the issue comes back, I suppose I could try creating some new sessions aswell, to see if that might be a contributing factor… this kind of thing bugs me no end, (despite the aforementioned lazyness ;).

I will have a look at the session manager plugin once I’ve finished fiddling, I did see it mentioned when I was looking into this issue but I didn’t want to complicate things when it wasn’t behaving as I would expect, now it is I will probably take a looksee, I certainly use sessions and NP++ an awful lot, not just for code either (editing/spellchecking posts, saving common comments, links, to do lists, you name it ;), I would be lost without NP++ and the sessions ;)

Also, perhaps after your current problem is “solved”, given this situation:

I use sessions quite a lot, I group certain things together

Maybe you should consider using the Session Manager plugin?

some of my sessions seem to have different settings to other sessions

Can you give a specific “setting” example?

other sessions will automagically add a .txt extension

Makes me think of “old style” Open/Save dialog setting where, if you don’t supply an extension on a file at save time, the current filter setting (usually *.txt) extension (thus -> .txt) will be auto-applied.

Perhaps best advice for this would be to always add .xml to the end when you are saving a session?

don’t seem to be any entries for the session as a whole just the files included in the session

That is my understanding; pretty much just file info. Perhaps something interesting will be revealed if you can tell us what other setting(s) you suspect is being saved.

Also, do you use multiple instances of N++?