Open all search results

Dave Torr

In the “good old days” if I searched in files for something and got a number of files in the result I am sure I used to be able to just open all of them with one click. Now it seems I have to select them all and then open all selected - am I missing something?

Mark Olson

@Dave-Torr
Regardless of what the answer to your question is, we are more likely to be able to help you if you include more information about your Notepad++ installation (?->Debug info from the main menu).

But this is just a generic suggestion; somebody else might be able to say something more meaningful just going off of what you said in your initial post.

EDIT: Here’s the official documentation on the search results window that you’re talking about. It only has one mention of the “Open all” command, and doesn’t say anything about that command ever having been removed. Curious.

PeterJones

@Dave-Torr said in Open all search results:

I used to be able to just open all of them with one click. Now it seems I have to select them all and then open all selected - am I missing something?

Yep, that was a recent change. It’s described in the User Manual ~~"Copying paths from the search results window. And, as the Manual explains,~~ … for now, to get the old behavior, you have to select-all before doing the open-all-selected. Sorry.

(The Search Results right-click context menu was in the middle of being updated for being fully consistent, with a series of separate-but-related updates, but there was a pause, and momentum was lost, so the issue which requested making the CopySelectedPaths/OpenSelectedPaths work more consistently with CopySelectedLines hasn’t had any effort put into it.)

updated based on @Mark-Olson’s EDIT

PeterJones

@Mark-Olson said in Open all search results:

It only has one mention of the “Open all” command, and doesn’t say anything about that command ever having been removed. Curious.

Whoops. When I updated the section above for the Copy Selected Path(s), I should have also updated that one. (Of course, I was hoping that by the time the version with the CopySelectedPaths updates was released, that the OpenSelectedPaths would have been brought into parity with CSP, so then my documentation could have done both to the same condition; I apparently forgot that OpenAll had been partially changed when I did the doc update.)

guy038

Hello @peterjones and All,

Peter, could you add these two small work-arounds, in the N++ documentation :

If you hold down a Ctrl key and do a left-mouse click on a blue search header line, it folds all lines of this specific header, only
If you hold down a Shift key and do a do a left-mouse click on a blue search header line, it unfolds all lines of this specific header, only

Best regards,

guy038

P.S. : BTW, sorry about my last post to you; I didn’t think of a chat reply ;-))

Alan Kilborn

@guy038 said:

If you hold down a Ctrl key and do a left-mouse click on a blue search header line, it folds all lines of this specific header, only

If you hold down a Shift key and do a do a left-mouse click on a blue search header line, it unfolds all lines of this specific header, only

These things don’t work (for me), so I’m confused??

Double-clicking a search header line (e.g. Search "foo" (2 hits in 1 file of 1 searched) [Normal]) toggles its fold state (folded or unfolded), as does double-clicking a pathname sub-header line. No modifiers (e.g. Ctrl or Shift) needed.

Alan Kilborn

@Dave-Torr said:

In the “good old days” if I searched in files for something and got a number of files in the result I am sure I used to be able to just open all of them with one click. Now it seems I have to select them all and then open all selected - am I missing something?

Actually, it was two clicks. First you right-click in the Search results area, then you left click on Open all (old name).

Now it is a keycombo plus 2 clicks, the keycombo being Ctrl+a.

It was judged (by me) that Open all wasn’t all that useful (the way it was). A lot of file-level searches are typically run in a Notepad++ session, accumulating results in the Search results area. An Open all could be problematic because, due to this prior accumulation, you’d likely open way more files than you need at the moment. Opening only the files in the selection gives you more granular control over what gets loaded. And, of course, if you truly want everything, just preface issuing the command with a Select All.

And, as Peter mentioned, there may be future changes to operation as well. Stay tuned.

guy038

Hi, @peterjones, @alan-kilborn and all,

Alan, I misspoke in my previous answer

The following formulation should work :

If you hold down a Ctrl key and do a left-mouse click on the lefmost little box symbol with a - of a blue search header line, it folds all lines of this specific header, only
If you hold down a Shift key and do a do a left-mouse click on the leftmost little box symbol with a + of a blue search header line, it unfolds all lines of this specific header, only

As you said, double-clicking on a blue search header or on a green path sub-header seems more intuitive. However the double-click action is not identical to my work-arounds !

First example :

Right-click on the search result panel and choose the Unfold all option
Do a first double-click on an header => All text regarding that header is folded
Do a second double-click on this same header => All text is completely unfolded

If, instead :

I right-click on the search result panel and choose the Unfold all option
I hold down the Ctrl key and left-click on the minus symbol, on the left of an header line
Then, either, I left-click on the minus symbol, without the Ctrl key or I double-click on this header line => Only the pathnames of this header are unfolded

Second example :

Right-click on the search result panel and choose the Fold all option
Then, if I double-click on a header line => Only the pathnames of this header are unfolded

If, instead :

I right-click on the search result panel and choose the Fold all option
I hold down the Shift key and left-click on the plus symbol, on the left of an header line => All text of this header are unfolded ( pathnames and lines )

Best Regards,

guy038

Dave Torr

@Mark-Olson
Thanks for that - was not aware of that debug info. But seems clear it has replaced a convenient one-click option with 2 click - more exercise for my clicking finger!

Alan Kilborn

@Dave-Torr said:

But seems clear it has replaced a convenient one-click option with 2 click - more exercise for my clicking finger!

Again: It was previously a 2-click operation; now it’s a 3-action operation. Read above (clearly you didn’t) for detail on that.

What the change has done has made the right-click “open” command actually usable for me (and guessing here, other users), at a slight inconvenience to you. Sorry for that but IMO the software is better for the change.