Notepad++ find in files filter EXCLUDE

Question

I\'m looking for a way to get n++\'s find in files dialog to exclude certain files...

the only reference I\'ve found so far is this http://sourceforge.net/project/showno

Answer 1

I got a tip from another forum that helped me solve this. Mark the folders you want to exclude as 'hidden'. By default the 'Find in Files' in N++ excludes hidden directories. You can then revert the hidden directories when you're done.

A little tedious, but better than nothing.

Answer 2

There may be a more elegant way, but you could use PowerShell to get all of the extensions in a folder, and then just remove the ones you don't want. This example gets all of the extensions in the "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer" folder.

NB: don't forget to surround (Get-ChildItem ... -join ";*" with parentheses.

"*" + ((Get-ChildItem -File -recurse "C:\Users\SomeUser\Documents\Visual Studio 2013\Projects\WindowsService1" | Where {$_.Extension -ne ""}| Select-Object Extension -unique | Sort-Object Extension | Get-Unique -asString  | Select -ExpandProperty Extension | % { $_.ToLower() } | Get-Unique) -join ";*")

This returns:

*.cache;*.config;*.cs;*.csproj;*.exe;*.jmconfig;*.manifest;*.settings;*.sln;*.txt

Then just remove what you don't want.

Answer 3

not that its a GOOD answer, but, what I've found that works is this

*.sql ; *.asp ; *.html ; *.as ; *.mxml

Its definitely not an 'exclude' list, but, by including all the types I need to look at, I get the same result. In my case, I've only got those handfuls of types that I look for often. If your set was wider, this would become even less useful.

Answer 4

The solution from https://notepad-plus-plus.org/community/topic/10653/exclude-directories-from-the-search/5 is to temporarily set those folders you want to exclude to be 'hidden' folders (hiding just the top level sub-dir is sufficient), and this then stops Notepad++ descending into that sub-directory.

Worked for me just now!

Answer 5

Note, as of December 5th, 2019, Notepad++ 7.8.2 now supports exclude filters.

For example to exclude exe, zip and jar files, your 'find in files' filter will look like this;

*.* !*.exe !*.zip !*.jar

Relevant code change here.

Answer 6

Perhaps the real answer is don't use NP++ for this. Have you looked at http://www.wingrep.com/features.htm or

Edit: I use http://stefanstools.sourceforge.net/grepWin.html these days