Notepad++ (Notepad Plus Plus) is one of the best text editor available in the market today. It is free, open source and features rich. There are 3rd party plugins available to extend the functionality of the Notepad++.
In this article, I am going to show how to install plugin in Notepad++.
Introduction
Plugins are actually add-ons to main software which extends and enhance the working of the base software. There are a good number of plugins available like Combine, Compare, NppFTP and many more. Refer this link for complete list of plugins.
There are two methods available to install a plugin. One is using Notepad++ Plugin Manager and other is Manual Plugin Installation. Both methods are very easy.
Install plugin using Plugin Manager
Notepad++ has a separate menu Plugins to manage the plugins repository. It lists all the active and installed plugins. You can install, update, uninstall plugins using the Plugin Manager. Plugin manager is a plugin itself. We are going to use Combine and Compare plugin to demonstrate installation.
Launch Notepad++ and Navigate to Plugins->Plugin Manager->Show Plugin Manager. You can also use Keyword short cur Alt+p to open the menu.
It opens a plugin manager. It shows all Available, Updates and Installed plugins for your Notepadd++ installation.
- Available – List of all available plugins.
- Updates – Plugins for which updates are available.
- Installed – List of all Installed plugins.
In available list tab, search for combine plugin and select it and click Install button.
Plugin Manager shows information like Plugin name, Category, Available Version, Stability. When you select the plugin you can see additional information like Author, Source, Homepage, etc
Combine Plugin
This plugin allows you to combine/merge all currently opened files into one file.
Author: Heinz
Homepage: http://www.scout-soft.com/combine.
It downloads the plugin from the respective online repository and installs it. Post-installation you get the message “Notepad++ needs to be restarted for changes to take effect. Would you like to do this now?” Click on Yes to restart the Notepad++ to see installed plugin under Plugins menu.
This is the most preferred and used method until the time Plugin Manager Removed from the repository by the developer. If that is the case with you, you can use below manual method. As Plugin Manager is also a plugin, you can use the same method to install it as well.
Some useful links for reference.
- Installer doesn’t install plugins manager #3634
- No plugin manager
- 64 bit version is without “Plugin Manager” (and NppExport) #2459
Manual Plugin Installation
There may not be the Plugin Manager available or sometimes, installation does not work using it. The plugin may not be available in this list. In that case, use the Manual Installation method.
Just to explain, I tried installing compare plugin, but it failed with Installation of Compare Failed message.
Manual is also an easy method. Just copy respective plugin .dll file to the plugins directory. Let’s demonstrate it using Compare Plugin.
There is a central plugin directory which maintains the list of all Plugins. These links are not up to date as those are pointing on SourceForge Compare Plugin Repository while some of the latest code is present in GITHUB. So I would suggest better to use description given in plugin manager or just Google it to get the latest code.
You can download compare plugin from this link.
Under releases tab, lastest dll and source code is available. Depending on windows platform download ComparePlugin_v2.0.0_X64.zip or ComparePlugin_v2.0.0_x86.zip bit file.
Extract the downloaded folder in C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\plugins folder. This is the folder where notepadd++ is installed. Copy extracted ComparePlugin folder and ComparePlugin.dll as shown below.
That’s it…!!!
Open Notepad ++ and check installed the plugin. You can see it is available under the list. Compare plugin is one of the most useful plugins.
I hope you liked the article, please share and subscribe.
