Saved tabs disappeared with upgrade to v8.6.5

Vladimir Krasko

After applying this version, all my previous tabs (saved and not saved) were closed! I had ~100 New files, which weren’t saved. Only the last tab remains opened, but it changed its name to “New 1”. Why? Is there any way to bring all the other tabs back?

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moderator note: duplicated from this post in the “Notepad++ Release 8.6.5” Announcement Topic, because while this happened when upgrading to v8.6.5, it probably isn’t specific to that version, and debugging this shouldn’t clutter the Announcement

Alan Kilborn

@Vladimir-Krasko said in Notepad++ release 8.6.5:

I had ~100 New files, which weren’t saved.

Sorry to hear that; it doesn’t solve your problem but see HERE.

mkupper

@Vladimir-Krasko said in Notepad++ release 8.6.5:

After applying this version, all my previous tabs (saved and not saved) were closed! I had ~100 New files, which weren’t saved. Only the last tab remains opened, but it changed its name to “New 1”. Why? Is there any way to bring all the other tabs back?

That sounds very much like that you are using a new/different location for your Notepad++ settings. The list of tabs is stored in the session.xml file. If you start Notepad++ and only see a tab for “New 1” then Notepad++ did not see your session.xml file.

Let’s start with Please Read This Before Posting, specifically, the section about posting your debug info so that we can know where your current copy of Notepad++ is installed and where it is looking for the session.xml file.

xomx

GitHub issue #14976 .

mkupper

@Vladimir-Krasko, @xomx posted a link to github where I see that you had provided your Notepad++'s Debug info. I see that you are using %AppData% which is Notepad++'s default.

Take a look at the %AppData%\Notepad++ folder.

When was the folder itself created?
When was the session.xml file created?

If you are using Windows Explorer to look at the %AppData%\Notepad++ folder then switch to the Details view and add the Created column to get the creation dates. If you using the command prompt then use dir /tc to view file or folder creation dates instead of the usual last-modified dates.

If the creation dates are within the last few days then you likely are in luck as that means your previous installation of Notepad++ was storing its settings somewhere else.

If your session.xml file was created weeks, months, or years ago then it likely was corrupted and so Notepad++ generated a new/empty session.xml file. Unfortunately, that also means the version of your session.xml that listed 100+ tabs was overwritten.

You may see a file named session.xml.inCaseOfCorruption.bak but I suspect that won’t be useful in your case as Notepad++ overwrites it every time it exits.