Notepad++, is a great open source editor similar to EditPlus and UltraEdit. One of the features that I really appreciated in EditPlus, was the capability to select a column of data. I checked if NotePad++ has a similar feature and found the following hotkey that can be used to do this..
“Alt + Left Mouse Click” puts you in Column Mode Select
For a complete list of hotkeys that can be used with Notepad++, check out this link
Thank you, this was very helpful
Comment by avi — May 7, 2009 @ 7:59 am
Using only the keyboad you can use the shift+alt key to select columns using the arrow keys.
alex.
Comment by Alex — May 7, 2009 @ 9:48 am
Thx for the tip Alex.
Comment by Vinay — May 14, 2009 @ 11:55 am
Thanks for blogging this, Alex.
Comment by Tom Haws — May 15, 2009 @ 12:47 pm
thanks a million!!!!!
Comment by NPpp — May 18, 2009 @ 7:56 am
thanx man !!!! You did my day !!!!!
Comment by Mohamed — June 5, 2009 @ 7:44 am
Thanks, that’s what I was lookin for
Comment by Deve — July 23, 2009 @ 9:15 am
Thanks for the tip.
Comment by GF — September 17, 2009 @ 10:30 am
Excelent. I start use notepadd++ now, because old version don’t like. But this is very much better. Thanks and take care.
Greetings.
Comment by Tavo — December 31, 2009 @ 8:51 am
Thanks a lot. It’s really helpful.
Comment by Alex — January 14, 2010 @ 10:16 pm
Greeeat !!!
I had to migrate from UltraEdit to NotePad++ and was missing this feature so badly..
thanks a lots.
Comment by CruzBrasil — March 16, 2010 @ 4:28 pm
Great, thanks. Just found out one more helpful thing:
To select columns without using the mouse use ALT+SHIFT and the cursor keys
Comment by joachim — July 14, 2010 @ 3:23 am
Thx JS.. Very helpful
Comment by Vinay — July 14, 2010 @ 7:17 pm
Thnanks .. it is vary helpful
Comment by Satya — July 26, 2010 @ 6:27 pm
Awesome tip! Very very useful!
Comment by Sander Versluys — August 18, 2010 @ 3:20 am
I am not able to select a hudge column without having to drag the mouse down for a very long time. It does not handle the SHIFT + click selection…
Comment by Cahine — August 19, 2010 @ 8:05 am
Cahine – Did you try ALT + SHIFT?
Comment by Vinay — August 23, 2010 @ 10:04 pm
Hi
I want tp publish notepad++ to some programmers in my company. Do you know if we can copy multiple lines in column editor mode?
We are in the need of copying text from a terminal program, and want/need to use column editor by copying several lines into column edit mode.
Is it possible in notepad++?
regards
Jerry
Comment by Jerry — January 5, 2011 @ 6:33 am
Yes you can select multiple rows in a column.
Comment by Vinay — January 10, 2011 @ 2:30 pm
Thanks man!^^
Comment by Loen Galido — January 20, 2011 @ 9:47 pm
Mandalayoga.org Thanks for that awesome posting. It saved MUCH time
Comment by fenshui — February 16, 2011 @ 6:50 am
Thanks a lot!!
Comment by Ravikumar — February 23, 2011 @ 6:07 am
Thanks for the super quick help.
Comment by Jason — March 4, 2011 @ 3:47 pm
Use Alt+Shift+Left mouse click for block (column) selection
Comment by veetee — March 8, 2011 @ 3:33 pm
I’m cramming for a project and googled this in a desperate attempt to isolate a set of datapoints from a program output… you totally saved my day!!
Comment by Emily — March 24, 2011 @ 10:03 pm
thank u…………….good tip!!!!
Comment by santosh — May 7, 2011 @ 12:59 pm
Thanks a lot dude, but still once the column selection is on, how will you select entire column. I can’t select manually as my data runs till 80000.
Comment by Shyam Krish — June 21, 2011 @ 7:29 am
Great tips! Thanks every one
Comment by Suresh — July 5, 2011 @ 7:52 pm
The tip was useful. Thanks!
Comment by Humberto Fioravante Ferro — August 10, 2011 @ 10:08 am
Thank you a lot!!! This tip is really useful.
Comment by Konstantin — September 6, 2011 @ 1:45 am
can we create column in a notepad++ data file which is uncommon about column as well as line but one thing some datas are similar in each line
like below details but i need the below datas in a particular column wise.
Update Scintilla from 2.21 to 2.25
2. New feature: Non-greedy regular expression (Scintilla).
3. Add Copy/Cut/Paste Binary Content feature.
4. Add “paste HTML content” and “paste RTF content” commands.
5. Fix the inverse of title and message for some MessageBox.
6. Add “Remove Unmarked Lines” command.
7. Add “Column Mode Tip” to notice users the usage of column mode in Notepad++.
8. Make stream comment of php/javascript foldable.
Comment by tamesh — September 19, 2011 @ 9:51 am
Tamesh – I didn’t understand your question. Can you give it another try?
Comment by Vinay — September 19, 2011 @ 9:41 pm
I’m looking to delete a single column from an 8k plus file. If I select shift + alt then arrow over I can get one column, how can I select this entire column for all the records?
Comment by Jeff — September 30, 2011 @ 7:32 am
Jett – You can hit the end key and you will get to the bottom of the file. Am assuming that is what you are looking for.
- V
Comment by Vinay — October 3, 2011 @ 9:14 am
Thanks bro, nice job
Comment by Fulano — October 10, 2011 @ 9:08 pm
Thanks! I miss UE but this is nice!
Comment by CoreyD — October 14, 2011 @ 4:51 am
Contrary to what vinlay said
I cannot select an entire column to the end of file.
End goes to end of line
And Ctrl End doesn’t work when column selecting.
I also hate that the cursor doesn’t go back to the beginning position after typing and changing lines, ala textpad.
making multi line edits a pain.
Comment by shawn — December 2, 2011 @ 9:27 am
Shift+Alt+PgDn to select the entire column on page.
You have to hit pgDn twice.
Hope that helps!
Comment by Michael T — January 5, 2012 @ 2:24 pm