Notepad++ User Manual

The Notepad++ User Manual covers a wide range of features and configurations, including:

• Core Editing: Getting started, Working with Files, Editing, Searching, and Views.
• Advanced Features: Function List, Auto-Completion, Macros (Task Automation), and Running External Commands.
• Syntax & Customization: Syntax Highlighting (Built-in and User Defined), Themes, and Preferences.
• Extensibility: Plugins and Plugin Communication.
• System & Environment: Sessions, Workspaces, and Projects, Command Line Arguments, Configuration Files, and Localization.
• Integration: Right Click - Edit with Notepad++ (Shell Extension) and Upgrading.

Notepad++ provides several mechanisms for searching and replacing text, marking results, and navigating through matches.

Key capabilities include:

• Search and Replace: Standard text manipulation.
• Marking: Adding bookmarks to lines containing search results or highlighting the textual results themselves.
• Counting: Generating a total count of matches found.

There are three primary built-in search mechanisms:

1. Standard Dialog-based Searching: Using the Find, Replace, Find in Files, and Mark dialogs.
2. Dialog-free Navigation: Using Next and Previous commands to move through matches without opening a dialog.
3. Incremental Search: A specialized search mode for rapid navigation.

Note on Shortcuts: All keyboard shortcuts listed in the manual are default values. You can view or modify them using the Shortcut Mapper in the Preferences menu.

Notepad++ provides three native systems for managing groups of files:

1. Sessions: A specific set of files that can be opened all at once. A session stores file paths, active files, view positions, selections, bookmarks, and language settings. Files in a session do not need to be in the same directory.
2. Folder as Workspace: A tree-based interface that allows you to browse and access files within a specific Windows directory.
3. Project Panels: A tree-based interface for accessing related files that may be scattered across different directories in your filesystem.

You can also use various plugins to extend these capabilities.

Notepad++ supports approximately 90 programming languages with built-in features including syntax highlighting, syntax folding, auto-completion, and function lists.

If a language is not supported, you can:

1. Define it using the User Defined Languages System.
2. Write or use a lexer plugin.

Performance Note: Starting in v8.3, Notepad++ disables syntax highlighting for files larger than 200MB to prevent performance degradation. This threshold can be configured in Settings > Preferences > Performance (available from v8.4.7 onwards).

The Function List Panel displays all functions or methods found in the current active file. Double-clicking a function name in the panel navigates the editor directly to that location.

It uses a regular-expression (regex) engine to parse files. Users can customize or add support for new languages by providing XML definition files containing regex rules.

In addition to command-line arguments, you can trigger Ghost Typing using the UI:

1. Type the name of an Easter Egg into a Notepad++ document.
2. Select (highlight) the name.
3. Open the About Notepad++ dialog (via the ? menu or the F1 shortcut).

Instead of opening the dialog, Notepad++ will create a new document tab and perform Ghost Typing for the selected name (or a random choice if applicable).

Note: This behavior can be disabled by creating a zero-byte configuration file named noEasterEggs.xml.

The Branch Reset construct (?|expression) allows multiple alternatives within an alternation to share the same capture group numbering.

In a standard alternation, each capture group increments a global counter. In a branch reset, each alternative resets the counter, so that capture groups appearing after the (?|...) construct continue numbering based on the largest group number found within the branches, rather than the sum of all groups in all branches.

Note: The (?|...) construct itself is not a capture group and does not consume a group number.

# Example without branch-reset (groups increment continuously)
(?x) ( a )  (?: x ( y ) z | (p (q) r) | (t) u (v) ) ( z )

# Example with branch-reset (groups reset per branch)
(?x) ( a )  (?| x ( y ) z | (p (q) r) | (t) u (v) ) ( z )

The NPPM_MSGTOPLUGIN message enables inter-plugin communication. Plugin X can send a message to Plugin Y if it knows Plugin Y's complete module name (including .dll extension).

Plugin Y receives a CommunicationInfo structure containing an internalMsg (an integer defined by the receiving plugin), the srcModuleName of the caller, and a void * info pointer for custom data exchange.

struct CommunicationInfo {
	long internalMsg;
	const wchar_t * srcModuleName;
	void * info; // defined by plugin
};

// Usage: Send message to 'MyPlugin.dll'
// wParam: L"MyPlugin.dll"
// lParam: Pointer to CommunicationInfo
SendMessage(hPlugin, NPPM_MSGTOPLUGIN, (WPARAM)destModuleName, (LPARAM)&info);

The theme supports two ways to render menus:

File tree menu (Default)

By default, the theme renders pages from the content/docs section as a tree structure. You can control the order and titles using title and weight in the page front matter.

Leaf bundle menu

You can define a custom menu using a leaf bundle.

1. Create a file at content/menu/index.md (or your configured path).
2. Use headless = true in the front matter.
3. Define the menu structure using Markdown links and sub-items.
4. Enable it in your site configuration by setting BookMenuBundle to the path of your menu file (e.g., BookMenuBundle = '/menu').

+++
headless = true
+++

- [Book Example]({{< relref "/docs/" >}})
  - [Page One]({{< relref "/docs/page-one" >}})
  - [Page Two]({{< relref "/docs/page-two" >}})
- [Blog]({{< relref "/posts" >}})

Notepad++ allows you to record a sequence of editing actions and replay them later to automate repetitive tasks. Macros can be played once or multiple times (e.g., running through an entire document).

Key behaviors to note:

• Caret Sensitivity: Macros are sensitive to the current position of the caret and typically operate relative to its current position.
• Persistence: You can save macros for future use.
• Customization: You can assign specific keystrokes to macros using the Shortcut Mapper for faster access.