3 Handy Built-In Notepad++ Features For Beginners:
Find In Files/Find In All Opened Documents/Count:
Notepad++’s Find features are plentiful and thus, come in very handy in multiple cases. For example, if you’re working with multiple inter-dependent files, chances are, you need to find where one variable is used and how it’s affected in another file, you can use Notepad++’s Find in Files feature, under Search in the menu bar.
This will allow you to specify a path or folder location where Notepad++ will search for a keyword in all of its files, even when they’re not text files (but this will usually show up in Notepad++ as garbled text of course)
This tip was actually mentioned a while back, but it is still incredibly useful. So is another similar feature that lets you search in all your currently opened files, which you can find when you search regularly with Ctrl + F. Just click on “Find All in All Opened Documents” instead of “Find Next”and that will probably save you some time if the directory you want to search in has too many files.
Move Text Files To Other View For Split-Screen Productivity:
This is similar to Windows and Ubuntu’s window-snapping features, with a few differences. In Notepad++, you can apply the same zoom settings to both files in this split-screen view, snap windows to take up different widescreen proportions, and more, without having to manually adjust everything for each of the windows, like you would have to in Windows or Ubuntu.
Synchronize Vertical/Horizontal Scrolling:
There is a Compare plugin that was discussed in the recommended Notepad++ plugins article, but when you want to be your own detective and find out differences in that snippet of code, a split-screen setting and synchronized scrolling will feel like one of the better inventions of all time.
Not only can you synchronize vertical scrolling but also horizontally, I’m guessing for those longer, more descriptive comments or maybe even very long ‘if’ statements (*shudders). If you assign a keyboard shortcut for either scrolling feature, comparing can go a tad faster as well!
Notepad++ is a powerhouse when it comes to features so this is not an exhaustive list of course. What features do you absolutely love about Notepad++? Or if vouch for an alternative text editor, why do you prefer that one specifically? We would love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.
