Can't make a keyboard macro for a shortcut in Notepad++ v6.9.2

[decrepit-old-geekoid]

I’m an old user, but I have not posted here in a long time. I’m trying to get a particular macro to work via keystrokes. I use the date and time short format from the TextFX menu a lot. I would like to use a keyboard macro to run it, but I’m running into problems. I record the mouse clicks and save what was recorded, but when I try to set it to run with ctrl-shift-t that does not work. I hope someone can help me despite the ancient version of the software that I’m using. Thanks. The debug info is below.

Notepad++ v6.9.2
Build time : May 18 2016 - 00:34:05
Path : C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\notepad++.exe
Admin mode : OFF
Local Conf mode : OFF
OS : Windows 10
Plugins : PluginManager.dll docMonitor.dll DSpellCheck.dll mimeTools.dll NppConverter.dll NppExport.dll NppNetNote.dll NppTextFX.dll SpellChecker.dll

[PeterJones]

@decrepit-old-geekoid said:

Notepad++ v6.9.2
Build time : May 18 2016 - 00:34:05

Wow! That’s ancient. You do know that there’s been a decade of improvements to the software since then? Including a lot of security fixes?

I use the date and time short format from the TextFX menu a lot. I would like to use a keyboard macro to run it, but I’m running into problems.

It’s been a long time since I’ve used that version, but in modern Notepad++, you cannot macro-record plugin commands. We have a FAQ: Automating Notepad++, which has a section on how to “cheat” the macro system (manually edit the macro to include something like a plugin command), but I don’t know if the NppUISpy plugin works on a Notepad++ that old, so I don’t know if you can have the easy way to find out the command ID that gets assigned to the TextFX

---

If you choose to update, and I recommend that you do, some notes:

• you could install the 64-bit version instead of the 32-bit version, which would allow editing bigger files
• there is no more “PluginManager”: that was abandoned somewhere around 2018 (v7.6) because the PluginManager started trying to show ads inside Notepad++, which was anathema to the Notpead++ owner. Since v7.6.3, Notepad++ has had a stable “Plugins Admin” tool built into Notepad++
• NppTextFX doesn’t exist in its old form, since the original plugin’s author had long-abandoned that plugin. But in modern Notepad++, someone has forked it to NppTextFX2 (currently, v2.0.3), which you can install from the Plugins Admin interface
• DSpell check and NppNetNote plugins are still around, so you can install those from Plugins Admin
• I don’t see docMonitor in Plugins Admin, so I’m not sure what that is. It may be that modern Notepad++ has the features you need built in (it’s got a “tail -f mode” and the “File Status Auto-detection” settings, but I don’t know if that covers everything you wanted from the docMonitor plugin)

[PeterJones]

I unzipped the v6.9.2, and looked a bit:

• docMonitor was one of Don’s old plugins that he didn’t bother continuing development on when he moved Notepad++ from sourceforge to GitHub, because the feature of updating files every few seconds is already built into Notepad++, even in the old v6.9.2.

• DSpellCheck.dll and SpellChecker.dll are two different spell-checker plugins. There’s no reason to have both. DSpellCheck allows either the Hunspell dictionary, or the Aspell dictionary (which is what ShellChecker.dll uses), or Windows’ built in spell-checking files (which is what Word and similar use). There’s no reason to have both, even in the old v6.9.2.

• It is possible to add a keyboard shortcut to any of NppTextFX commands – use the Settings > Shortcut Mapper, go to Plugin Commands, and look for the TextFX command (like Convert quotes to "), and you can Modify those to have a keystroke for that single command

• I verified that even the most-recent NppUISpy here has the 32-bit version (..._UNI.zip) which, if you unzip the DLL into your plugins directory, will allow you to use UISpy even on your old Notepad++. And I confirmed that the macro syntax was enough the same that the FAQ’s section on manually editing the macro will allow you to embed

  • for example, for my portable v6.9.2, with the plugins I installed, UISpy told me TextFX > TextFX Characters > Convert quotes to ’ was at 22030 (it will almost certainly be at a different ID for you, because I didn’t grab all the same plugins that you had). But for me, I could then have a macro that would do the Select All then Convert quotes to ’ with the following macro source:

    <Macro name="AllSingleQuote" Ctrl="no" Alt="no" Shift="no" Key="0">
        <Action type="0" message="2013" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" />
        <Action type="2" message="0" wParam="22030" lParam="0" sParam="" />
    </Macro>
    

    so after saving that, and restarting Notepad++, I had a new macro which would correctly run the NppTextFX command.

So it’s possible to do what you want in Notepad++ v6.9.2. But I still highly recommend uninstalling the outdated, insecure version, grab the most recent 64-bit version, and bring yourself into the 2020s.