Seamless upgrading to 64-bit
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What would be the easiest way to upgrade from a 32-bit NPP to a 64-bit, including:
- All NPP settings
- All installed plugins settings
Thank you.
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Settings is easy: with normal installation, it goes in
%AppData%\Notepad++
š whether itās 32-bit or 64-bit installation, so the 64-bit will automatically see the settings.Plugins: sorry, no easy answer: the installations go in two separate folders, and the plugin DLLs are incompatible between the two, so after you install 64-bit, youāre just going to have to install all the plugins from the plugins admin. But for the plugins settings, those go in
%AppData%\Notepad++\Plugins\Config
, so are shared between 32-bit and 64-bit.Your actual biggest point of pain might be file association and related, because weāve had reports from various users that when going from 32 to 64bit, one or more registry entries donāt get updated correctly, so it points to the wrong folder. If you have problems with that, you might want to search the registry for
notepad++.exe
, and make sure that any paths point to your 64-bit installation, not the 32-bit installation. -
As @PeterJones says itās easy and not so easy. I did this a few years ago. I should start by saying Iāve always used the portable ZIP edition, use local config option (so my settings are in the Notepad++ install folder) and Iāve never used the installer.
That said, I just installed 64-bit into
npp64
directory, copied myplugins\config
directory from the 32-bit one and other settings files (mostly in the main Notepad++ folder - config.xml, contextMenu.xml, shortcuts.xml) and then manually installed plugins. I did have some file editing to do (config.xml I believe contains the full path of Notepad++ so that had to be changed). Once I could run both, I spent some time making sure everything was āthe sameā. Then I used 64-bit only for a while and anytime I found something in my workflow was āmissingā, I could revert to 32-bit while seeing if there was a way to address in 64-bit. I did find some plugins just were āmissingā but I also found different - in some cases, better - ways to work without them (e.g. I gave up MultiClipBoard plugin (32-bit only) in favor of Ditto - system-wide smart clipboard). I eventually just deleted the 32-bit version as I became so comfortable with 64-bit and addressed any of the āmissingā pieces.So it doesnāt have to be one or the other, you can gradually shift. Hope that helps.
Cheers.
PS: This conversion time for me is when I forked a lot of 32-bit only āabandonedā plugins and made them available on 64-bit. That getās mentioned from time to time - this is the āoriginā story.
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It worked mostly seamlessly.
I had to search the registry for references of NPP that used the āProgram Files (x86)ā path or the equivalent āspecial folderā GUID, and edit them.
Similarly, config files in %APPDATA% had to be modified (Firefox, Thunderbird, IZArc, etc.) because I could not remember what applications I configured to use NPP as an editor.
But everything seems to be working now.