Notepad++ is the most popular open-source text editor for Windows computers. It can edit any plain-text file containing any type of data including the source-code files of all sorts. It comes with colored highlights for various programming languages such as C, C++, VB.net, C#, Java, HTML, XML and more. For adding more features to Notepad++, we can use plugins that add new features or enhance already existing features.
Notepad++ comes with a feature using which we can search about any text or term from an opened file. The way this works is that you have to first select the text string from an opened file. After making a selection, we can right-click on the selected text and choose “Search on the Internet” from the context-menu. This launches your default web browser with Google as your search engine.
In the settings for Notepad++, they have given options to switch to other search engines including DuckDuckGo, Google, Yahoo!, Stack Overflow but they have not given any option for Bing. People who prefer Bing seem to have been left out.
Here is how you can add Bing as a search engine for “Search on the Internet” right-click context-menu command in Notepad++:
- Launch Notepad++ and select Settings → Preferences from the menubar.
- In the preferences window, select Search Engine from the left side list.
- Choose Set your own search engine here: from the list of the options.
- In the text box type https://www.bing.com/search?q=$(CURRENT_WORD) .
- Click on the Close button to close the preferences window.
This is it, you have now set Bing as the search engine to be used for searching anything. Now you can select any text in Notepad++, right-click on the selection and then choose “Search on the Internet” from there. It will now open Bing search in your default web browser and you would see the results in a few seconds.