Notepad++ is a free and open-source text editor available for the Windows platform only. But, you can also install it on Linux using snap. This text editor supports plugins to extend the feature. Combine is one such plugin for Notepad++ that helps you to combine/merge two or more text files.
NPP Combine Plugin Features,
- Merge\combine all texts that are currently open
- Insert filename before each text
- Insert a line before and after each text (a line is: ——————————————————-)
Install Combine Plugin
Notepad++ provides Plugins Admin to manage plugins. It helps you to install, and update plugins. The combine plugin is not available in the repository, so you need to manually install this plugin. You can use the plugin manager if available.
Manual Installation
In the manual method, you need to download the plugin and copy it to the Notepad++ Plugins folder.
Step-by-step instructions to install combine plugin in Notepad++.
- Download Combine Plugin from Official Page. It downloads combine.dll to your desktop. The current version of the plugin is 1.0 and it works with 32-bit Notepad++.
- Open Notepad++.
- Navigate to Plugins – > Open Plugins Folder… This opens the plugin folder.
- Create a folder Named Combine and copy the downloaded combine.dll. You should have admin privilege to copy files.
- Restart Notepad++.
Combine plugins should be visible under plugin menus as shown below.
How to use Combine Plugin
Now let’s see how to use the combine plugin to merge files.
To demonstrate the working of this plugin, let’s create 2 files file-1.txt and file2.txt. Below is the content of these files.
file-1.txt
I am line 1 in file 1 I am line 2 in file 1 I am line 3 in file 1
file-2.txt
I am line 1 in file 2 I am line 2 in file 2 I am line 3 in file 2
Now let’s see combine these files using the plugin.
Note:- Combine plugin works on all open files in Notepad++, so make sure to open only the files which you want to combine.
Open both the files in Notepad++. Click on Plugins-> Combine-> Start. It opens a popup as shown below.
Click on OK. You can see files are merged together in a new 1 file. Combine plugin reads file from left to right. file-1.txt contents are first followed by file-2.txt.
Now let’s select a different option and see what happens.
Before text – insert filename
Before text – insert line
After text – insert line
After text – insert linefeed
Summary
We explained the combine plugin in Detail. We have also shown how to install the plugin and use it to combine 2 or more text files together.
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