Issue printing files with Notepadd++

Andreas Neff

Seems I have a quite rare problem with Notepad++ as the only thread I found with an similar issue was the one above.

When I use the print feature, first, everything seems fine. The standard print dialog appears and after clicking on “print” the printer immediately starts printing.

But all that comes out is the header and footer of the page with a blank space inbetween! (Though the header points out the correct name of the file to be printed!)

Can it be, that this goes together with the fact that I have substituted the ordinary notepad.exe with Notepad++? I’m not able to start notepad.exe anymore. Windows always starts Notepad++ instead, even when I doubleclick on the notepad.exe entry in Windows Explorer in the Windows directory or when I try to start it from its directory right away from the shell (command window).

The pity is, I don’t remember how I did this! It was years and years ago! Might be, I used some tool from your site or from the forums. I have some faded memories to this. And, unfortunately, I don’t remember when this problem started. In the past, the print feature once worked well. But then something must have happened! And this was still under Win7. In the meantime I have migrated to Win10 of course (how should I have prevented it?) and the problem still exists.

But, this issue does NOT appear with any other program! I tried with WordPad (which uses the same standard print dialog as well), with Word, with LibreOffice Writer. No problems at all! Only Notepad++ fails to transport any file content to the printer! Seems it only prints his own configured features (header and footer)!

There is another problem that apeared maybe from the same time: When I start Notepad++ by doubleclicking on a .txt file in Windows Explorer within a directory that includes a space (Hex 20), Notepad++ will not open it but brings an error message, that it is not able to create (?) the file “Eigene”! (In the German version of Windoes the directory “Documents” is called “Eigene Dateien”, so you can say that I will have a Hex 20 space in every path used! If this issue is not related to the above one, I will open another thread for it, but maybe it can give some clues to the indicated issue! (But strangely this does not happen always. I have not found out all the details about that issue by now. Right now, when I had Notepad already open in this session, it opens with a doubleclicket file from within “Eigene Dateien” without any problems! Funny thing, this!)

Here also is the debug info from my current configuration:

Notepad++ v7.9.1 (32-bit)
Build time : Nov 2 2020 - 01:03:56
Path : C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\notepad++.exe
Admin mode : OFF
Local Conf mode : OFF
OS Name : Windows 10 Home (64-bit)
OS Version : 2004
OS Build : 19041.685
Current ANSI codepage : 1252
Plugins : DSpellCheck.dll mimeTools.dll MultiClipboard.dll NppConverter.dll NppExport.dll SessionMgr.dll

Please let me know, if you need any further details! Thank you!

Terry R

@Andreas-Neff said in Issue printing files with Notepadd++:

But all that comes out is the header and footer of the page with a blank space inbetween!

I would suggest that Notepad++ is printing the file (As you do get the header and footer info), however you might have the text colorized in such a way that if printing as black and white it might be in “white” thus not appearing to print. Try printing to a “print file”. This is a file which is essentially all the commands and text that would be sent to the printer, but directed to a “virtual” printer instead. Then you should be able to open that file in Notepad++ to view the contents and confirm the text to be printed exists, some of the content might be in weird characters, disregard and search for text you know was in the file.

Here are some links to help you
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-server/printing/print-to-file-without-user-intervention

https://askleo.com/print-to-file/

Terry

Andreas Neff

Thanks Terry, that hint was brilliant!

Yes, I switched the style to “Blackboard” as I prefer a dark background on screen, and I was suggesting that in that case, because the background colour is not printed, a light default foreground colour would be inverted for printing (some other programs do so), but it seems that for Notepad++ all colours are printed as is, except for the background! Well, keeping that in mind should help! :)

But even though, if every other colour is kept as is, it still would make sense to invert pure white before printing (no usual printer will print white colour). Maybe this could be a future feature! :)

deus ex

@Andreas-Neff

As a workaround, try printing to a PDF-file instead. This way you have a WYSIWYG level of control, printing the generated PDF should give you the output result you are looking for.