Problems when switching back into Notepad++ to make it the Active window
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Before I state my problem, I want to let you know I’m NOT a programmer at all. I just use and create a lot of text files and find NP++ to be the best for it. However…
Way back in the day, I used to use a simple text editor called MetaPad (which I still use for short texts), and one of it’s features was that, if you were working in some other program and then click onto the Metapad window to make it active, the cursor wouldn’t move from where it was, thus you could continue typing and editing from where you were.
But in NP++, if I have, for example, the cursor flashing partway down one of the lines of the file, and change to work on one of a number of different windows on the screen, and then come back to NP++, the cursor is simply moved to wherever I clicked on to bring the NP++ window active.
Why does it do this? Can I disable this to work similar to my old text program?
Basically, what I’m asking is that if NP++ is NOT the active window and I click on NP++ to MAKE it the active window, it will ignore the first click other then to make NP++ active, and will NOT move the cursor to wherever I may have clicked to make it active.
Frank
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@Frank-Wojtczak said in Problems when switching back into Notepad++ to make it the Active window:
Basically, what I’m asking is that if NP++ is NOT the active window and I click on NP++ to MAKE it the active window, it will ignore the first click other then to make NP++ active, and will NOT move the cursor to wherever I may have clicked to make it active.
Click on the Notepad++ button in the taskbar, or click on the title bar of the Notepad++ window, or the status bar at the bottom, or the tab for the file. Just don’t click within the text or the left margin if you don’t want to move the cursor.
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@Frank-Wojtczak said in Problems when switching back into Notepad++ to make it the Active window:
Way back in the day, I used to use a simple text editor called MetaPad (which I still use for short texts), and one of it’s features was that, if you were working in some other program and then click onto the Metapad window to make it active, the cursor wouldn’t move from where it was, thus you could continue typing and editing from where you were.
I experimented and discovered that Microsoft Word (or at least the 2010 edition) also does the same thing. A click into the text/body to activate Word does not move the typing cursor. If you click twice then it moves the typing cursor to the spot where you clicked. The same is true with Excel 2010 in that click to activate does not move the active cell. The command prompt and PowerShell also behave the same way where click to activate just activates and a second click is needed to use the text selector.
Plain old Microsoft Notepad and Notepad++ both move the typing cursor when you click to activate. Surprisingly, Outlook 2010 also moves the typing cursor when you click to activate meaning it’s not consistent with Word and Excel from the Office 2010 suite.
Click to activate seems like a useful idea and so I put in a feature request for it.
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@mkupper Thanks. It really does seem like a great Quality-of-Life feature. I’m surprised more text editing software doesn’t do it.
Either way, thanks again for submitting that for me (and us all).
Frank
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I think it is “one of those things”. Sometimes…you want it (to put the caret where you click). Sometimes…you don’t.
More often than not, I want the caret where I’m clicking, even if that clicking is to activate.
Sometimes I get frustrated with apps where click merely activates, and I have to click AGAIN to get input focus where I clearly intend it to be.
The exception is if I’ve set up a selection and then I had to go somewhere else in another app and do something, and now I want to come back and do something with the selection.
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@Alan-Kilborn - If you already have one or more active selections then you can hold the Ctrl key down when you click to activate Notepad++. It’ll keep your selection(s) active. The Ctrl key will first get sent to whatever app was in the foreground but Notepad++ will then see the Ctrl+click when it becomes the foreground app.
Normally the Ctrl key is used to set up multiple selections. It still works in Notepad++ and also works here in the message entry box for the forums by holding the Ctrl key down while click-dragging the mouse to create selections.
I was experimenting with the Ctrl to see if it would be worthwhile to add as part of a click-to-activate feature request where Ctrl would both activate and move the text cursor and no Ctrl would just activate without moving the text cursor.
I noticed that in Microsoft Word that Ctrl-click selects the entire line but only if Word is the active app and there are no other selection(s) of text within Word. You can’t add entire lines to a multi-selection.
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@mkupper said in Problems when switching back into Notepad++ to make it the Active window:
If you already have one or more active selections then you can hold the Ctrl key down when you click to activate Notepad++. It’ll keep your selection(s) active
In my experimentation after reading this, Ctrl+click to activate gives me an additional caret at the click point, along with keeping the other selection I made.
I suppose that isn’t harmful if I’m intending to just copy the selection I previously had.
But I’d have to remember to Ctrl+click to activate Notepad++, and I probably won’t remember that.