How To Keep Text Highlighting After closing the document?

Paul Wormer

@Pika714444 No there is not. You must understand that to keep highlights in a file, the file must contain metadata (data that are only meant for the computer and are invisible to the user). Saving metadata is against the philosophy of text editors like Notepad++. Text editors work with readable text (with a few exceptions like end of line and tab characters). Word processors, like MS-Word, save lots of metadata in their files. These metadata contain info about the page layout, fonts (roman, bold, italic, …), text highlights, etc.

However, when your highlighting is systematic (programmable), there are some advanced N++ ways to reintroduce your highlighting whenever you reopen your file.

rdipardo

You can export a file’s content and styling as HTML (with the syntax highlighting embedded as CSS rules), or as an RTF file. You only need the NppExport plugin, which is already installed as long as you don’t have one of the “minimal” Notepad++ releases:

Be aware that this will not preserve the appearance of the actively selected lines (assuming that’s what you meant by “highlighting”). But every other style will be faithfully preserved:

If you choose the HTML export, you can always edit the CSS to add the appearance of an active selection yourself:

Alan Kilborn

@Pika714444 said in How To Keep Text Highlighting After closing the document?:

Is there anyway to keep the text highlight after closing the document ? because when i save and re-open the document , the highlighting is not there.

Is your screenshot even from Notepad++?

Paul Wormer

@Alan-Kilborn S/He could have piped the Unix output to an Ascii file and brought it over to a Windows environment. @rdipardo How likely do you think it is that somebody will make an HTML+CSS file out of something as volatile as a Unix directory listing? @Pika714444 I said that metadata is invisible to the user. However, Markup Languages (such as LaTex, HTML, Troff) make the markup information visible to the user, in contrast to word processors as WordPerfect and MS-Word that keep this info invisible.

Alan Kilborn

@Paul-Wormer

I’m trying to get to the root of where the “highlighting” that the user has shown is coming from. Is it style #1 thru #5 in a dark mode context?

mkupper

@Pika714444 said in How To Keep Text Highlighting After closing the document?:

Is there anyway to keep the text highlight after closing the document

In summary, the answer is “no, you can’t keep text highlighting.”

The problem is that the highlighting we see is something that Notepad++ shows while we are editing a file. The highlighting is not part of the file itself but rather is extra “decoration” that is available within Notepad++.

While it would be possible for Notepad++ to save the highlighting and other decorations somewhere and to restore them when the file is re-opened that would create two problems.

People would start making the assumption that the highlighting and decorations are part of the file itself and are shocked/surprised/upset/etc. should they copy the file somewhere else, e-mail it to someone, etc. and there are no highlighting and decorations.
If the file is modified or changed by someone or something outside of Notepad++ then the file will be out of sync with Notepad++'s idea of how the file should be decorated.

One solution would be for the developers of Notepad++ to invent a new file format that contains a mix of the text and the decorations to use with that text. In the interest of portability let’s use the .docx file extension and use the same internal file format as Microsoft Word. People would then want to Notepad++ to do all of the things Word does. (hint: OpenOffice died and LibreOffice is still is not popular)

Becoming unpopular is a path that Notepad++'s developers have chosen not to take which is why highlighting is not saved/restored.

Lycan Thrope

@mkupper said in How To Keep Text Highlighting After closing the document?:

(hint: OpenOffice died and LibreOffice is still is not popular)

Although I agree with your answer that NPP does not do what the OP seems to want to do, please define what you mean by died, as I haven’t read of the demise of either, which I use. I don’t use Word, nor any Microsoft products other than the OS, by choice, so the alternatives suit me just fine, and last I looked, they still exist.

It almost sounds like what the OP wants is to be able to keep highlights in the text, somewhat similar to what you can do with Adobe Acrobat in a .pdf. Since NPP does not save the file with that actual highlighting, as does a .pdf, it’s not possible for the OP to achieve what it sounds like he wants, without a better English translation, and additional information like his version, etc.

Everyone here sounds like they’ve done their best to mind read, but that’s not how this forum is supposed to work, especially since they never seem to return to actually supply that information. Supposition should end without more work on the OP’s part.

Pika714444

@Paul-Wormer

Okay thanks for letting me know that it’s not possible.

Pika714444

@rdipardo

Thanks a lot , i just wanted to highlight some important parts of the commands output in Linux / Networking , it will make my life easier when i open the document and find for Example where to look for a specific part of the output when Entering the command so it will be a lot of time saving , also during studying it will be helpful to highlight some output of the commands to make clear this is an important part of the output and that’s what we are looking for to look like, but unfortunately it’s not possible in NotePad++ as mentioned.

Pika714444

@Alan-Kilborn

Yes it’s.

Pika714444

@mkupper

Thanks for elaborating ,i just wanted to highlight some important parts of the commands output in Linux / Networking , it will make my life easier when i open the document and find for Example where to look for a specific part of the output when Entering the command so it will be a lot of time saving , also during studying it will be helpful to highlight some output of the commands to make clear this is an important part of the output and that’s what we are looking for to look like, but unfortunately it’s not possible in NotePad++ as mentioned.

Pika714444

@Alan-Kilborn

Yes it’s style #1 thru #5.

Pika714444

@Lycan-Thrope said in How To Keep Text Highlighting After closing the document?:

It almost sounds like what the OP wants is to be able to keep highlights in the text, somewhat similar to what you can do with Adobe Acrobat in a .pdf. Since NPP does not save the file with that actual highlighting, as does a .pdf, it’s not possible for the OP to achieve what it sounds like he wants

Yes that’s what i wanted to achieve.

mpheath

@Pika714444
Your highlighting appears to be line based. Instead of highlighting lines, perhaps bookmarks might be an alternative option as bookmarks are saved in session.xml.

Press Ctrl+F2 to bookmark a line.
Press Shift+F2 to goto previous bookmark.
Press F2 to goto next bookmark.

If you close the file in Notepad++, then the bookmarks and other saved settings for the file will be removed from session.xml.

More information about bookmarks can be found in the manual within the searching page

Alan Kilborn

@Pika714444 said in How To Keep Text Highlighting After closing the document?:

Yes it’s style #1 thru #5.

The author of Notepad++ hinted that remembering such styling in a session file could become a feature someday: https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/issues/12684

mkupper

@Pika714444 said in How To Keep Text Highlighting After closing the document?:

@mkupper

Thanks for elaborating ,i just wanted to highlight some important parts of the commands output in Linux / Networking , it will make my life easier when i open the document and find for Example where to look for a specific part of the output when Entering the command so it will be a lot of time saving , also during studying it will be helpful to highlight some output of the commands to make clear this is an important part of the output and that’s what we are looking for to look like, but unfortunately it’s not possible in NotePad++ as mentioned.

It looks like you want something where you can quickly and easily mark up text as you are reading it. Notepad++ won’t be a good fit. While there are ways to get Notepad++ to color code text they involve a considerable amount of extra work each time you style something and often, there is no easy way to then search for things styled in a certain way.

Some of my friends are happy with Microsoft OneNote. It seems to be available for free now and may be a better fit for keeping color coded notes.

I myself have moved in a direction of always using plain text and tend to use indention to separate or “highlight” command results from the command. For example:

some command
    results
    or notes about the results

That allows me to use plain Notepad++ plus other tools that deal with plain text files.

Pika714444

@Alan-Kilborn

I hope they do it ASAP because it will be a very beneficial feature for highlighting a specific important words/sentences/line in a large text output file , this is the feature i needed actually from the purpose of this post.