Notepad++ is a versatile text editor with many features such as syntax-highlighting for many programming languages. This open-source editor is an excellent Windows Notepad replacement and has become the first choice of many coders whether it is web development or system programming. Many of the Windows users who have been using Notepad++ for years just cannot live without it. For them it is essential to have Notepad++ on any computer they are using.
If you are one of those Notepad++ fans and want to carry your portable copy of Notepad++ with you all the time so that you can use it on any Windows computer, then you can easily convert your Notepad++ installation into a portable copy. Its all a matter of copying and pasting files. Here is how:
- Create a folder for portable Notepad++ in your USB pendrive, for example, D:\npad.
- Launch Notepad++ and select ? from the menubar then select Debug Info.
- From the window that is displayed, note down the installation path of Notepad++.
- Open the folder where Notepad++ is installed (as found in step 2).
- Copy all the files from this folder to the portable pendrive folder (as created in step 1).
- Open the portable Notepad++ folder (in my case D:\npad ) on the pendrive and delete uninstall.exe.
- Create a new file named doLocalConf.xml in this folder. It is an empty file with 0 bytes. In order to create this file, first create a text file by right-clicking in the folder and select New → Text Document and then rename the newly created file to doLocalConf.xml.
- All done, you can now close all Notepad++ windows and launch Notepad++ from portable folder.
Basically what you are doing is copying all the Notepad++ files to the portable folder and adding a new “doLocalConf.xml” file too. This empty file tells Notepad++ to save all the configuration options in the local folder instead of the user profile folder – making it a portable application.