We cannot guess what you are doing differently. Automatic indentation is on by default and works correctly in Notepad++ under normal circumstances.

You might want to try to download the official portable zip and trying your experiment in that, without making any settings changes. If the portable works right for you, but your installed copy does not, then there is some difference in your settings which is causing the problem. If you have the same problem in the portable copy, then tell us the exact steps you used when showing the problem, so that we can try to replicate under the same circumstances.

update: here’s a screencap of it working for me with a portable v8.6

update 2: I also noticed that you’re editing a .txt file, but interpreting it as C++ Source. You might want to see if you have the same problem if you name the file .cpp as is usual for C++ source code.

If users turn this off at some point in their usage of Notepad++, do we really have to help them figure out that they should turn it back on?

as you can see, despite it being an image, when wrapping the indicator it returns right to the beginning of the line and not just below the instruction

The Settings > Preferences > Editing > Line Wrap settings you are showing in your screenshots are not the feature you are describing. Those settings affect the visual display of long lines when you have View > Word Wrap enabled.

But you have implied that what you really want is for a line to automatically indent when you hit ENTER after a line that was already indented – like when you hit ENTER after line 62 to create line 63 in your second screenshot. If I have interpreted you correctly, then what you want is the Auto-Indent feature, which is found at Settings > Preferences > Auto-Completion > ☐ Auto-indent. If that option is checkmarked, the Notepad++ will automatically indent when you hit ENTER

when wrapping the indicator it returns right to the beginning of the line and not just below the instruction

If I try a similar thing with a C language document, it doesn’t do that; my caret after Enter is indented one tab width.

as you can see, despite it being an image, when wrapping the indicator it returns right to the beginning of the line and not just below the instruction

I wanted to report a problem I encountered with word wrapping that doesn’t work as expected if aligned and indented word wrapping is set in the settings. In both cases the carriage return is made at the beginning of each line.

You need to provide far more information such as the steps you used to reproduce, screen shots. Please keep in mind that people can’t read your mind and so don’t know what you “expected.” Notepad++ may well be working exactly as designed and does what its average users expect.

That said, there are quirks with both the Enter and Tab keys where indentation chosen by Notepad++ sometimes surprises me. For me, if I have a tab-indented paragraph:

	Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit,
	sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore 
	magna aliqua.▯

The cursor is on the ▯. I press Enter and see that Notepad++ keeps the indentation as expected:

	Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit,
	sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore 
	magna aliqua.
	▯

I go away, work on other files, and later am back in this area though this time I have the cursor at the beginning of the line.

	Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit,
	sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore 
	magna aliqua.
▯	

I don’t see that there is a tab after the cursor, I press Tab to indent and am surprised by the extra indent.

	Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit,
	sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore 
	magna aliqua.
		▯

Notepad++ worked correctly but did not read my mind… :-)

This sounds to me like a long-known issue that I could take some time and go over to my copy of Notepad++ and try to remember the exact circumstances and then reproduce the problem and then come back here and type all about it…

But you’ve already done that, you just don’t show (e.g. screenshot) the example that you are currently looking at on your screen. So why don’t you do that, and then others will have a better idea on how to comment on it.

Overall I think what will come out of this is “that’s how Scintilla does it” (Scintilla being an external project editing component that Notepad++ integrates), and it would have to be reported to the folks that manage that project, to see if they’d make a change to it.

But, first things first… more information…

Be aware we have a FAQ post here that refers you to github for postings bugs. Read it first, but before posting there, could you expand with your debug info, under the ? Menu, copy and paste it here.

Possibly try the same situation without any plug-ins running. That FAQ post is here. Although you don’t have a crash issue, it helps you to understand how to run without all or some plug-ins. Possibly the issue lies with a plug-in rather than Notepad++ and this will help narrow it down.

If you do get other members supporting your theory (so do post that additional info here), and they will help identify it if you can do some of this work, all this detail goes into that bug post on github.

Terry