advance column mode editing request

Would be a nice addition. The Alt mode selects a block, but if you try and write (overwrite) that block then only the first line gets changed and the rest of the block is erased.

You cut-delete text in column mode to delete column text.

The TextFX plugin offers Fill Down Insert/Overwrite and Insert (Clipboard) through lines. You can search and replace in columns with the Ctrl+R dialog.

Definately not the same thing.
I quit often work with custom formating and data files. Going through the suggested work around  methods seems more time consuming.
A simple switch to column mode would really be great!

(Granted would NOT like this to be default mode, hehe)

I tried the column mode in Ultraedit and the only special thing I can find is that it allows me to replace the whole block with a single character. Other than space which TextFX provides with "Zap all characters to space", I can't see any use for this.

I love NP++ and I'd really like to do away with UltraEdit, but...

I'm also wishing to be able to open a text file and add a ";" to the beginning of each line, whether or not that line is blank or has characters on it.  UltraEdit can do it easily using Colume Mode, but NP++ ...I don't know.

I've tried using the search & replace giving "^" as the regex to search for, and ";" as the replacement string, and it works 1 line at a time by clicking Replace, but Replace All just complains that my regex isn't formatted correctly.  I can't go clicking Replace a thousand times as a solution.

I've also tried a whole bunch of different TextFX options including Fill Down Insert, Fill Down Overwright, Ctrl-R search and replace (which most of the time winds up crashing NP++) ... no luck. 

It's very possible that the potential exists there, so if anyone can figure out how to add an arbitrary character to the beginning of every single line in a document - please let me know!

Thanks a million!

dharma

The least complicated way is with TextFX Insert (Clipboard) through lines.

Copy a quote to the clipboard.
Ctrl-A mark entire document
TextFX Edit | Insert (Clipboard) through lines

It is also fairly easy with the Ctrl+R dialog. Search for Ctrl+J, replace with Ctrl+JQuote. Can you post instructions to get the Ctrl+R dialog to crash N++?

To get Fill Down Insert to do the same thing you type a quote on the first line, then block the first column mark including the newly quoted line to the end of the document. That's pretty tedious.

Perhaps you want a quote at the end of the line too, with any special characters in the middle translated. For that, Plugins | TextFX Convert | Convert text to code command ...

I haven't really taken the time to try the things that Chris is suggesting, but here's my commment anyway.

The mode that you guys are referring to as column mode sounds a lot like "block select" in TextPad.  I think it is a great feature and is reasonably easy to use/understand.  I would vote for it as a good thing to add to Notepad++.

>"block select" in TextPad

Alt already selects blocks. All Textpad Block Select does is to always select blocks without Alt until canceled. This is an easy feature to add.

What they're looking for is best implemented in Crimson editor and poorly implemented in Ultraedit . In column mode, your cursor spans many vertical columns and what you do affects every row at that column. Column mark every line, set your cursor at column one, hit quote.