How to Use Notepad++ for Beginners

The Encoding menu is where Notepad++ catches most people out. Entries above the separator line only change how the editor reads a file’s bytes. The Convert to entries rewrite the bytes on disk (Notepad++ User Manual). Mix the two up and what you save is not what you thought you were saving.

What Is Notepad++ and When Does It Beat Windows Notepad?

It runs on Windows only, and it’s released under the GNU General Public License, so it costs nothing and you can modify it. Don Ho maintains it. Scintilla, the component that draws and edits the text, sits underneath. On top of plain text editing you get tabs, syntax highlighting, code folding and regular expression search, all in one window that also handles source code and logs.

Windows Notepad is no longer bare. Microsoft added tabs, autosave with session restore and dark mode after Windows 11 launched, then rolled out spell check and autocorrect in July 2024 (Tom’s Hardware).

Tabs alone no longer justify installing Notepad++.

A quick note or a one-line config edit stays in Windows Notepad. Pattern-based replacement, searches across whole folders, column edits and plugins belong in Notepad++.

How to Download and Install Notepad++

Download the installer from notepad-plus-plus.org/downloads, match the build to your machine (64-bit, ARM 64-bit or 32-bit), and run the .exe.

The current stable release is 8.9.8.1, according to the official downloads page as of November 4, 2026.

1. Open the official downloads page and select the current version.
2. Pick the build that matches the machine: 64-bit, ARM 64-bit or 32-bit.
3. Pick the package. Most people want the exe installer. IT departments use the MSI, and the portable or mini-portable 7z and zip files skip installation.
4. Run the installer and accept the administrator prompt. Without admin rights, choose a folder you can write to or use a portable edition.
5. Leave the shell extension selected if you want “Edit with Notepad++” in the right-click menu.
6. Open Settings > Preferences > MISC and set the auto-updater to Disable, or to check on startup or on exit.

Installer, Portable, MSI and winget

The regular installer stores settings in %AppData%\Notepad++ by default. Updating Notepad++ or installing plugins later asks for administrator rights again.

The portable and mini-portable builds keep the app, settings and plugins in a single folder, with no file associations or context-menu entries unless you add them yourself. The mini-portable build ships only the default light and dark themes and English, and it has no plugins and no Plugins Admin.

The MSI exists for deploying Notepad++ across an organization. The developer tells ordinary users to take the exe installer instead.

The winget package ID is Notepad++.Notepad++, though winget is not among the routes in the official getting started guide. On Windows 11 it also adds a second package for the context-menu extension, which surprised one user enough to file GitHub issue 14963.

One trap: a portable edition unzipped into Program Files ignores the local-config file and keeps settings in %AppData% anyway.

Why the Update Path Matters

Worth knowing before you switch the updater on. Attackers who compromised the project’s former hosting provider redirected update traffic from selected users to malicious servers, from June 2025 until access ended on December 2, 2025 (Help Net Security, 2026).

The maintainer said the flaw sat in the hosting infrastructure and not in Notepad++ code.

Version 8.8.9, released December 9, 2025, started verifying the certificate and signature on the downloaded update installer. Version 8.9.2, released February 16, 2026, went further and added verification of the signed XML the update server returns, per the official release notes.

Run 8.9.2 or later. The manual also tells anyone still on 8.8.2 through 8.8.9 to upgrade immediately.

How to Open, Edit and Organize Files in Notepad++

Drop files onto the window to open them in tabs, then use Dual View, multi-editing and column mode for bulk changes.

Dropping a folder from Windows Explorer opens it in the Folder as Workspace panel, a tree view of that directory with a context menu for Find in Files and Explorer Here.

Tabs and Split View

Drag a tab to the other half of the window, or right-click it and choose Move to Other View, and you have two panes.

Clone to Other View shows the same document in both panes, which helps when you want the top and bottom of a long file on screen at once.

Vertical and multi-line tabs are set under Settings > Preferences > Tab Bar, and so are pinned tabs once you turn the pin tab feature on in that dialog. The Ctrl+Tab Document Switcher lives under MISC.

Multi-Editing and Column Mode

Multi-editing needs the mouse. Hold Ctrl and click to drop an extra caret anywhere, or Ctrl+click and drag to add a second selection.

Column mode needs Alt. Alt+drag or Alt+Shift+arrow keys draws a rectangular selection, typing writes the same text on every row, and Esc leaves the mode.

Edit > Column Editor goes further and inserts text, or a counting number sequence, down every row. Start value, step, repeat count, leading zeros or spaces, and decimal, hex, octal or binary formats are all set in one dialog.

It does break in a couple of spots. Pasting a copied column block pushes existing text on the following lines to the right, so add blank lines first.

And with Column Selection to Multi-Editing turned on, a column drawn bottom to top pastes in reverse order in versions 8.6.3 and newer. Start from the top.

Bookmarks and Code Folding

A bookmark flags a whole line and shows as a circle in the margin. A mark highlights only the matched text.

Log files are where the two work well together. Run Mark with Bookmark line checked, then use Search > Bookmark > Remove Non-Bookmarked Lines to keep only the hits.

Code folding works for any language with a lexer. Pick the margin symbol under Settings > Preferences > Margins/Border/Edge: Simple, Arrow, Circle tree, Box tree or None.

The View menu fold commands keep working even when the style is None.

Session Snapshot and Periodic Backup

Periodic backup keeps unsaved edits across restarts, but the manual states plainly that it is not a long-term backup.

Turn it on under Settings > Preferences > Backup, after “Remember current session for next launch”. Notepad++ then copies changed files to %AppData%\Notepad++\backup\ at a set interval and skips the save prompt on exit.

To restore unsaved work after a restart or crash, relaunch Notepad++. The tabs reload from those copies, named like filename.ext@2026-11-04_190300, or new 1@... for unnamed tabs.

A manual save deletes the backup copy, and so does closing the tab. In multi-instance mode only the first instance is covered.

A crash can still lose data, so use Backup on save for real protection. Simple backup keeps one .bak copy, always one save behind, and Verbose backup keeps a timestamped copy per save.

File > Save Session leaves out unsaved, unnamed tabs, unlike the automatic session.

Setting the Language, Theme and Shortcuts

Notepad++ picks a language for each file on its own, and the Language menu overrides that choice at any time.

How Notepad++ Picks a Language

It goes down the list below and stops at the first match.

• A language passed on the command line with -l
• The language saved in the active session
• The file extension
• Special filenames such as makefile, CMakeLists.txt and Rakefile
• The first line, such as a shebang or an opening XML or PHP tag
• The default language, only if nothing else matched

The manual contradicts itself on the language count. Its getting started page says around 80, while the built-in languages page says around 90, with Python, PHP, SQL, PowerShell, TypeScript, YAML and TOML in the list.

A format missing from that list goes through the User Defined Language system, where you set keywords, comments, numbers, operators and delimiters.

Themes do not recolor a User Defined Language, so one built on a light theme looks wrong in Dark Mode until you edit its colors.

Highlighting also stops by default on files over 200MB. The threshold sits under Settings > Preferences > Performance.

Themes and Dark Mode

Dark Mode lives in Settings > Preferences > Dark Mode, where you can choose Dark Mode, Light Mode or Follow Windows.

The tone list runs Black, Red, Green, Blue, Purple, Cyan, Olive and Customized.

Editor colors are a separate setting. The theme pulldown sits in Settings > Style Configurator, and Notepad++ remembers a theme, toolbar and tab bar setup for each mode.

Leaving Dark Mode fully, title bar included, requires exiting and restarting Notepad++. Windows-drawn dialogs such as Open and Save keep the operating system colors regardless.

Shortcut Mapper

Settings > Shortcut Mapper lists the key binding for every command that can have one.

The Scintilla commands tab holds editor commands that appear in no menu. Ctrl+L cuts the current line, and Ctrl+Shift+L deletes it without touching the clipboard.

Notepad++ writes shortcuts.xml when it exits, so close the application normally after remapping keys.

Find, Replace and Find in Files

Ctrl+F opens Find, Ctrl+H opens Replace and Ctrl+Shift+F opens Find in Files, all in one tabbed dialog.

Choose the search mode first, then the scope. Both decide what Replace All touches.

Dialog Options That Change the Result

• With Wrap around unchecked, Replace All covers only the caret to the end of the file, or the start of the file to the caret if Backward direction is checked
• In selection limits Count, Replace All and Mark All to the selected text, and by default it switches itself on when the selection passes 1024 characters
• Match whole word only switches off in regex mode, so wrap the pattern in \b instead

The Find what box holds at most 16383 bytes. The limit counts bytes, not characters, so non-ASCII text reaches it sooner.

One quiet trap. Search for multi-line text in Normal mode and the Find All commands switch to Extended mode behind the scenes, so a selection containing literal backslash sequences can match something you did not mean.

Find in Files

Find in Files searches a directory instead of the open tabs, with an optional pass through all sub-folders and hidden folders.

Filters take space-separated wildcards such as *.php *.js, and a blank filter means *.*. Put a bang in front to exclude: !*.bin drops a file pattern, !\tests skips a top-level folder, and !+\log* skips matching folders at every depth.

Open tabs win over disk. A file with unsaved edits matches on the edited buffer, unless you turn on the option to ignore unsaved changes, added in 8.9.3.

Folder exclusion has no opposite, so you cannot re-include a subfolder of an excluded folder.

Reading the Search Results Window

Find All commands list every hit in a results window, which F7 brings into focus once a search has run.

F4 and Shift+F4 jump to the next or previous result from anywhere in Notepad++.

Right-click and choose Find in these search results to run a narrower second search over only the files or lines already matched. The window empties when Notepad++ closes, so copy anything you need first.

Regular Expressions for Common Cleanup Jobs

Use the built-in Edit commands when the job has a name, such as removing empty lines or trimming trailing space. Regular expression mode is for when the rule depends on a pattern.

Notepad++ runs regex through the Boost library, version 1.90 as of Notepad++ 8.9.1. Boost shares its origins with PCRE but does not claim to be PCRE, so a regex tester that never names Boost can disagree with the editor (Notepad++ User Manual).

Built-In Commands Before Regex

Remove Empty Lines sits under Edit > Line Operations, next to a second version that also removes lines holding only spaces or tabs. Remove Duplicate Lines keeps the first copy of each line wherever it sits in the file, and it clears every bookmark. Remove Consecutive Duplicate Lines removes only the copies sitting directly after the first one.

Trim Trailing Space is under Edit > Blank Operations and applies to the whole file unless you select text first.

Blank Operations do nothing on a column-mode selection. Sorting sits in the same Line Operations submenu, and lexicographic sort puts 10 before 2, so pick As Integers for numbers.

Patterns With Their Failure Cases

To delete every line containing a word, find ^.*?unused.*?$\R? and replace with nothing.

The question mark after \R matters. Without it, the last line survives when the file does not end with a line break.

Three more come straight from the manual’s own worked examples.

• Dates from dd.mm.yy to yy-mm-dd: find (\s)([0123][0-9])\.([01][0-9])\.([0-9][0-9])(\s) and replace with \1\4-\3-\2\5
• Prefix every non-empty line: find ^(?=.) and replace with the text to add, such as file:///
• Wrap every word in hyphens except those inside braces: find {[^}]*}(*SKIP)(*F)|\b\w+\b and replace with -$0-

The date replacement must restore the surrounding characters, because everything the search matches gets overwritten. A bare ^ also works as a prefix search, but a zero-length match shows a small tooltip caret instead of a selection.

For the brace pattern, read it as what you do not want, then (*SKIP)(*FAIL), then a bar, then what you do want.

Regex Errors and Limits

The error message is the least reliable part of regex mode.

• Find: Invalid regular expression appears only when you press Find Next. Every other button just reports no match, so test a new pattern with Find Next first.
• A Complexity error means Boost gave up on a pattern, not that it is malformed. Possessive quantifiers such as ++, lazy ones such as *?, or splitting a long alternation into separate searches all reduce backtracking.
• Replace All reruns the expression repeatedly. It is not the global flag from programming-language regex engines.
• \R cannot sit inside a character class, so [\t\R] matches a tab or the letter R.
• Variable-length lookbehind is not allowed. Use \K instead, and with \K in the Find box, use Replace All because single Replace will not work.
• Backward regex search is off by default.

Fixing Encoding and Line Endings

Read the status bar first. It shows the file’s line ending type, Windows (CR LF), Unix (LF) or Macintosh (CR), and the Encoding menu shows its encoding.

Interpret Versus Convert

Entries above the separator line change how Notepad++ reads the bytes. The bytes stay put and the visible characters change.

Convert to entries do the reverse. They change the bytes on disk, and the visible characters stay put.

The euro sign shows the gap. In UTF-8 it is the three bytes E2 82 AC, so reading that file as ANSI shows three odd characters instead of one.

If the text looks wrong, change the interpretation. If it looks right but another program expects different bytes, convert.

The byte order mark stays out of the editor panel, so you cannot see or delete it there. Convert to UTF-8-BOM adds it and Convert to UTF-8 removes it.

How Autodetection Decides

Autodetection works down this list and stops once something matches.

• A byte order mark in a UTF-16 or UTF-8 file
• An encoding declared in an XML or HTML prolog
• Byte-pattern analysis, if Autodetect character encoding is turned on under MISC
• Pure ASCII, or bytes that all follow valid UTF-8 rules
• The system locale, with ANSI as the last fallback

Windows-1255 Hebrew is a common wrong guess, per the manual. If your files match your Windows locale, switch autodetection off and let the system setting decide.

ANSI and the Windows UTF-8 Setting

Some Windows 11 installs ship with the system-wide UTF-8 option already on, and Notepad++ 8.8.8 and later grey out ANSI and Convert to ANSI when it is.

Open ? > Debug Info. The line Current ANSI codepage: 65001 confirms the option is active.

To turn it off, go to Control Panel > Region > Administrative > Change system locale and clear “Use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support”. The Character sets submenu stays usable either way.

Line Endings and Mixed Files

Mixed line endings quietly break Remove Duplicate Lines and most sort commands, which assume one uniform ending. Locale sorts are the exception.

Edit > EOL Conversion, or a right-click on the status bar indicator, converts the whole file. For a Windows to Unix change, choose Unix (LF). If the ending you want is greyed out, pick another one and then switch back.

New files take their ending and encoding from Settings > Preferences > New Document. View > Show Symbol > Show End of Line makes the characters visible.

Plugins Worth Installing and How Plugins Admin Works

Open Plugins > Plugins Admin, tick a plugin on the Available tab, click Install, and let Notepad++ restart to load it.

Using Plugins Admin

• The Available tab lists plugins not yet installed, each with an Install button
• Updates shows installed or deactivated plugins that have a newer version
• On the Installed tab you get Deactivate and Remove buttons
• Incompatible collects plugins that stopped working with your Notepad++ version
• Deactivated holds plugins moved to a disabled folder, so they skip loading at startup

The list is built from separate files for 32-bit, 64-bit and ARM64 builds, so a plugin can exist for one build and not another.

Each entry carries the SHA-256 fingerprint of its zip file, and Plugins Admin checks the download against it to block tampering. Since 8.9.2, the updater also launches only a signed program for plugin management.

Installing a Plugin by Hand

• Put the DLL in plugins\Name\Name.dll, with the folder name matching the DLL name
• Right-click the DLL, open Properties and tick Unblock, or Windows refuses to load it
• Settings > Import > Import plugin(s) handles single-DLL plugins only

Without write permission to the Notepad++ folder, run the editor as administrator first.

Where Plugins Fall Short

ComparePlus replaces the older Compare plugin, which its author no longer supports.

HEX-Editor deserves some caution. A Notepad++ Community experiment with a UTF-16 file found that leaving hex view handed back characters instead of the original bytes, so work on a copy.

For scripting beyond one command, the manual points to NppExec, PythonScript, LuaScript and jN Notepad++. NppExec adds a custom batch language, while the other three let you script in a full programming language.

How to Record and Run a Macro

Choose Macro > Start Recording, make the edits, choose Macro > Stop Recording, then replay with Playback or keep it with Save Current Recorded Macro.

Macros work relative to the caret, so put it where the first edit should happen before replaying.

Record, Save and Replay

Start and stop from the Macro menu or the toolbar buttons. Ctrl+Shift+R toggles recording too, though it is listed only in the Shortcut Mapper.

A fresh recording replaces an unsaved one, so save anything you want to keep. Saving asks for a name and a key combination, and you can rebind or delete it later through Macro > Modify Shortcut/Delete Macro.

Run a Macro Multiple Times accepts a count, or runs until the caret reaches the end of the file.

Saved macros live in shortcuts.xml. Their contents can be edited only in that file, because Notepad++ has no built-in macro editor.

What a Macro Cannot Record

Edit > Line Operations, Blank Operations, Convert Case, EOL Conversion, bookmark commands and Save All all record fine.

File > Open, Save As, the Column Editor, every Encoding menu entry and every Language menu entry do not.

Find and Replace actions are recorded only at the moment you run them. The Find what and Replace with text gets frozen into the macro, which suits a fixed cleanup but not a reusable template.

A solid first macro is Trim Trailing Space, Remove Empty Lines, then Save. Encoding changes have to stay manual.

Run Menu and Macro Security

Run > Run accepts anything you could type into the Windows Run box, and variables such as $(FULL_CURRENT_PATH) and $(CURRENT_WORD) pass the current file or word as an argument. A saved command can carry its own shortcut.

Running "$(FULL_CURRENT_PATH)" on its own opens the saved file with its Windows default association. That is how a .py file reaches your Python interpreter or an .html file reaches your default browser.

Beyond one-line commands, write a batch file or use NppExec.

Version 8.9.6.2 added a warning to the Run menu when shortcuts.xml changes outside Notepad++, and version 8.9.7 extended it to the Macro menu. Check the UserDefinedCommands and Macros entries, then use Run > Validate shortcuts.xml.

The manual puts responsibility for external commands squarely on the user.

When Notepad++ Is the Wrong Tool

Notepad++ is the wrong pick for projects that need an integrated debugger, a built-in Git workflow, a machine that does not run Windows, or multi-gigabyte files.

Large Files

Notepad++ Community threads from the v7 era put the per-buffer ceiling near 2GB, set by the Scintilla editing component. Treat that as an old report and test your own build.

The Large File Restriction under Settings > Preferences > Performance strips features from big files. With Deactivate Word Wrap globally checked, opening one large file turns word wrap off in every tab, and neither closing the file nor restarting brings it back.

Visual Studio Code has its own ceiling. A maintainer on the project’s issue tracker described a 50MB limit on files exposed to extensions, in an older thread worth rechecking against current behavior.

Where Search Stops

The manual states that Notepad++ aims at basic search and replace and is not built for every need. For heavy jobs it names GrepWin, PowerGREP, FileSeek and Everything.

Those tools can hand results back so that Notepad++ opens the matched file at the right line and column.

Choosing Between the Three

Pick Visual Studio Code when the work is a code project. Its documentation lists debugging, a terminal, source control and a marketplace of extensions, and the core editor needs no account.

For one-off cleanup of data and text files on Windows, installing it adds more than the job needs.

Sublime Text may be downloaded and evaluated free, but continued use requires a license, according to Sublime HQ’s store page. A personal license is a one-time purchase with 3 years of updates, while business licenses are annual subscriptions starting at $65 per seat per year for the first 10 seats.

Notepad++ FAQ

Does Notepad++ run on macOS or Linux?

No. The manual describes Notepad++ as an editor for Microsoft Windows. Visual Studio Code, which runs on Windows, macOS, Linux and in a browser, is a cross-platform alternative.

Is it safe to download Notepad++, and from where?

Yes, from the official downloads page at notepad-plus-plus.org or the project’s GitHub releases. Posts on the project’s community forum state that Notepad++ is not distributed through the Microsoft Store and that past Store listings were unofficial forks, so skip it.

How do I update Notepad++?

Choose ? > Update Notepad++, or download a newer installer from the official downloads page.

The auto-updater setting under Settings > Preferences > MISC controls whether Notepad++ checks on its own.

How can I make Notepad++ the default program for .txt files?

Open Settings > Preferences > File Association, pick the extension, and click the right arrow to register it. Run Notepad++ as administrator first, because this dialog writes to the Windows registry.

Which keyboard shortcuts save the most time?

Ctrl+D duplicates the selection or the current line, and Ctrl+T swaps a line with the one above it.

F3 and Shift+F3 jump to the next or previous match, and Ctrl+Alt+I opens incremental search.

What to Configure in Notepad++ First

A fresh install needs a few things checked in the first ten minutes, and all of them protect files rather than add convenience. Themes, shortcuts, plugins and macros can wait.

The order follows the damage each gap can cause.

• Update source and version
• Default encoding and line ending for new files
• Session snapshot and periodic backup

A wrong encoding or a missing backup destroys data, while a missing plugin only costs time. Each plugin is a DLL that loads with the editor, so add one only when a recurring job demands it.

This sequence was verified on November 4, 2026. It changes if Windows ships the UTF-8 system locale switched on by default, because ANSI then disappears from the Encoding menu.

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Bogdan Sandu

Bogdan Sandu is a front-end developer at TMS Outsource with 8+ years of experience in web technologies. He writes about developer tools, software platforms, and web workflows based on daily hands-on use.

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