Search For Notepad++ Settings With A Plugin That Indexes Them
Notepad++ is a popular substitute to the Windows’ default Notepad app. It’s less a text editor and more a fairly powerful code editor with support for lots of languages. Being an extensible application, it supports a number of plugins, which not only extend its native text & code editing functions, but also allow users to quickly use off-the-shelf code modules in their development projects. If you’re an avid Notepad++ user, and have installed a number of plugins, then you must’ve been dealing with a lot of menus and options’ dialogs. Since Notepad++ doesn’t provide an option to quickly search a menu or options’ dialogs, it becomes quite a wearisome task to manually search menus for accessing the required options. NPPMenuSearch is a plugin for Notepad++ that allows you to quickly search for a particular option from the available menus. For instance, if you are looking for the Settings dialog box of a particular plugin, use the NppMenuSearch’s search box to find the option or settings window you want to open.
An idea about the location of each feature is very important in order to use an application to its full potential, but programs as extensive as Notepad++ require you to spend a lot of time using them before you can know where each option is. This plugin takes care of that issue and saves you the trouble of learning the whole options menu before you can start taking advantage of the tool.
To install the plugin, open Plugin Manager from Plugins menu. From Available tab, select NppMenuSearch and click Install.
Once installed, it will add a search bar to the toolbar. You can easily change the position of the search bar on the toolbar by dragging it over the required section.
To search for a particular menu, just enter its name, and it will display the search results. The results box displays the complete path of each option related to your query, neatly stacked in different categories, such as Menu and Preferences. Clicking any search result will open the Menu or Preferences dialog box.
NppMenuSearch is an open source plugin that works on all versions of Notepad++. Testing was done in Notepad++ 5.9.5.
This plugin is amazing!!!!
But there is a piece of inaccurate information in this article:
“Clicking any search result will open the Menu or Preferences dialog box.”
When using NppMenuSearch,
searches return a list of two types of items:
[1] preference items from the menus
(with their path and a little cog icon)
[2] commands
(with their path and without a little cog icon)
If you click a search item located in the Preference menu,
NppMenuSearch will open the Preference menu and
the corresponding tab, and it even flashes a black bar
on the location of the item once for you!
Example (
If I type “Smart Highlighting”, and click the result
“MISC. -> Smart Highlighting -> Match case”
then the Preference window opens with the MISC. tab selected
and the check box and label for “Match case” flashes once!
)
Very neat.
However, if the result is a command (no cog icon displayed),
NppMenuSearch will execute that function, NOT take you to its location in the menu.
Example (
If you type in “Zoom”, then
click “View -> Zoom -> Zoom In (Ctrl+Mouse Wheel Up)(Ctrl+Num +)”
the Zoom In feature is triggered in Notepad++
)
Also there is no way with NppMenuSearch, as of version 0.8.0.21805, to go to the location in the Shortcut Mapper window instead of triggering the function, or to go to settings in the Style Configurator window.
This isn’t to discourage anyone from using it,
it’s still a wonderful plugin!
I just wanted to clarify about the functionality and slight limitations of this plugin.