I verified that at least for my current setup that the zoom level seems to have no affect on the printed results.

Same here. Perhaps I was unclear.

If I leave the zoom at default and adjust the font size for Default Style to be large enough for me to read easily on my monitor, I would set a font size of 14 or 16 points with Liberation Mono. (14 is bit smaller than I like, 16 is too big, 15 isn’t an option.) Those are too large for printing, though.

If I set Default Style to 12 points, printing is reasonable. If I then zoom in 3 steps, I’m just about where I want to be to read easily on the screen — without affecting printing.

The question I was answering was, “Why not just change your default font size?” Because that does affect printing (and, though I hadn’t remembered until I tried just now, also isn’t as fine-grained as zoom).

I routinely work “zoomed” because the font size also affects printing. Though I don’t print often, if I set the font size to be large enough for me to read easily on screen, it’s way too large for efficient printing.

I had not noticed that the zoom size affects the printing. That surprised me as I regularly change the zoom and have a one page report I print weekly. I know that with my printer that a printed page is 67 lines with 94 characters per line. Thus, before printing the weekly thing I check the line length and that it’s 67 or less lines. The printed pages have always been 67 × 94 despite that I may be zoomed in or out at the time.

I verified that at least for my current setup that the zoom level seems to have no affect on the printed results.

A minor Notepad++ printing annoyance for me is that words that DSpellCheck deems to be misspelled have red underlines in the printed pages. Thus I need to remember to ALT+A to disable DSpellCheck, print, and then ALT+A to re-enable automatic spell checking.

If you really want to start with a different text size as your normal text size, instead of using “Zoom”, why not just change your default font size?

I routinely work “zoomed” because the font size also affects printing. Though I don’t print often, if I set the font size to be large enough for me to read easily on screen, it’s way too large for efficient printing.

…zoom is actually saved in the preferences (config.xml > GUIConfig name=“ScintillaPrimaryView” > Attributes zoom and zoom2 – which is kindof funny that there are two, since N++ forces both zooms to be the same, so if I exit with two views visible, externally edit config.xml to set zoom=“0” zoom2=“60” and open again, both views will be at full zoom; however, if I exit with only primary view visible, set zoom=“0” zoom2=“60” and open again, it will open no zoom (ie, 100%); ooh, fun, I can confuse it: if I had 0/60 when I loaded with one View, then open or clone a file into the other View to get it to show both, then it will use different zoom sizes that run; if I exit and rerun in that condition, it will use the 60-zoom for both, and save the config.xml with both zooms at 60 next time.)

Is this worthy of creating an official issue, so that (in theory) these things get fixed, i.e., cleaned up?

Also is there a setting in notepad++ to change default zoom?

@Jonathan-Johansen replied with,

Your current zoom level is restored between sessions, so it is the default zoom level.

I was dubious about that reply, but was able to confirm it. Since I’ve always used zoom as a temporary thing (and Ctrl+Num/ to reset), I don’t remember ever noticing that the zoom is actually saved in the preferences (config.xml > GUIConfig name="ScintillaPrimaryView" > Attributes zoom and zoom2 – which is kindof funny that there are two, since N++ forces both zooms to be the same, so if I exit with two views visible, externally edit config.xml to set zoom="0" zoom2="60" and open again, both views will be at full zoom; however, if I exit with only primary view visible, set zoom="0" zoom2="60" and open again, it will open no zoom (ie, 100%); ooh, fun, I can confuse it: if I had 0/60 when I loaded with one View, then open or clone a file into the other View to get it to show both, then it will use different zoom sizes that run; if I exit and rerun in that condition, it will use the 60-zoom for both, and save the config.xml with both zooms at 60 next time.)

But back to @garrett-carey’s question: Setting “default” zoom actually seems unneeded to me. If you really want to start with a different text size as your normal text size, instead of using “Zoom”, why not just change your default font size? Settings > Style Configurator > Language: Global Styles > Style: Default Style and set Font Style > Font Size: ___ to something bigger. This way, 100%-zoom will be relative to the font size you actually want. (Most themes correctly inherit all the indvidual styles’s font-size from the Default Style for that font, so it should, in general, work across normal text and all the languages in your chosen theme.)

Also is it possible to restore tabs (not sure what happened but all my tabs I had opened went away.

Notepad++ itself does not have a built-in mechanism to archive copies of its configuration or settings files. Notepad++ stores all of its configurations/settings in plain text files.

The list of tabs is stored in the session.xml file. If you maintain backups of your computer then restore the version of session.xml that has the list of tabs that you are interested in.

New FAQ: Notepad++ is a Text Editor, not a Word Processor

Would there be a plugin to add it?

There would be a plugin if you want to “bold” or “italic” using HTML markup.

What you appear to be asking for is impossible for a text file. If some plugin gave you that ability in Notepad++ by defining a propriety storage format, they would have essentially made a Word Processing application, with it’s own unique save file, and it would cease to be a text file that you were editing. If you want to edit a text file, use a text file like Notepad++. If you want to edit a “pretty document”, use a Word Processor (like MS Word, or LibreOffice Writer, or any other word processor).

A text file edited in Notepad++ will have all the same information as that same text file edited in MS Notepad or Sublime Text or Atom or VSCode or any other text editor that can be used on a modern computer. If you expect Notepad++ to somehow embed formatting information in that, you will either make that text file incompatible with any other text editor (meaning it’s not actually a text file any more) or you are talking about a markup/markdown language, which I already said was covered by plugins for that particular language.

Also is there a setting to enable bold options in the top bar?

You might not understand the difference between a text editor and a word processor. Notepad++ is a text editor, not a word processor. It doesn’t store things like “bold” or “italic” in a proprietary format inside your text file, so having a “bold” button on the toolbar is meaningless. It edits text, and stores the raw text that you’re editing to a file. The text that you see while editing the file is the text that’s stored to the file when you save.

If the text file is source code for one of the known languages, the lexer will automatically apply colors/bolding based the Style Configurator or UDL settings for that language… but that information is applied every time the file is displayed by Notepad++, and is not stored in the file itself.

If you mean, “I am editing an HTML file (or Markdown file, or some other text-based markup/markdown), and I want a button on my toolbar that will apply the HTML tag (or Markdown code) to make that text bold when it is rendered in some other tool”, then there are plugins to help edit filetypes like HTML and can apply things like <b> tags or similar to the text you have selected.

But if you’re editing a plain text file, there’s no such thing in a .txt file as “color” or “bold”.

Also does notepad++ have a feature to act like the ios notes app with bulletins and 1)'s?

No, it does not have an auto-numbering/auto-bulleting feature.

There may be a plugin that provides it (though I don’t know of one that does). Or you could implement it as your own plugin, or through one of the scripting plugins.

Cause I want to know I can create a table chart with notepad++

Use the TAB key a bunch while typing your data?

That, plus installing the Elastic Tabstops plugin, which helps with aligning tabbed data the way you naturally want it.

Once you’ve got the initial structure, using Alt+Click&Drag (or Alt+Shift+Arrows) will give you column mode (rectangular) selections, which really help when doing tabular data in a text file.