Notepad++ Tips and Tricks

To see non-printable/special characters, you can go to the toolbar at the top and click: View > Show Symbol > Show All Symbols

If there is a Notepad feature that you use often, you can create a shortcut from the toolbar: Settings > Shortcut mapper

To select a block of text to edit or delete

• Left clicking on the starting position
• Hold down Alt and drag from starting position to the end of your block
• Enter text or delete

To quote a list of values

• Highlight the list and click Search > Replace (or Ctrl-H).
• Set the Search Mode to Extended or Regular Expression
• In the Find textbox, enter \n (if using line feed EOL) or \r\n (if using carriage return/line feed).
• In the Replace textbox, enter '\n, ' or '\r\n, ' depending on your EOL, including the quote characters.
  • If you prefer a trailing comma then use ',\n ' or ',\r\n' in the Replace textbox.
  • You will still need to add the quote to the first and last value.

Of course you're not limited here.  There are other uses for enclosing text, such as wrapping in html tags, xml, etc.

Replace text with non-printable characters using RegEx

• Highlight the list and click Search > Replace (or Ctrl-H).
• Set the Search Mode to Regular Expression
• In the Find textbox enter [^ -~,\n,\t].  Other sources say to use: [\x00-\x08\x0B\x0C\x0E-\x1F\x7F-\x9F]
• Put whatever you wish to replace the character(s) with in the Replace textbox.

To edit multiple lines in different locations use Edit > Column Mode.  Then Ctrl-Right Click on the places you wish to edit.  You should see cursors in each location you clicked.  Now you can type or delete text.  NOTE: Once Column Mode is enabled, you can't turn it off.  I've never had a problem keeping it enabled.