How can I improve window/session/instance/tab/file management and organization in notepad++?

Question

I love notepad++ and I use it every day for almost everything.

I am now coming up on 1,000 tabs open. Most of these tabs are like new 459, new 782, etc.

I find what I like to do is safe everything I type into a new file. But I can't be bothered to save the file, now it take 2-3 minutes for notepad++ to open so I just leave it open always now. No problem for me.

You see, I have almost 1,000 "new xxx" files which are files I have not saved but I rely on notepad++'s autosave feature.

Before the autosave, I never was able to save files because making a new file and saving it was too much of a hassle so when i restarted my pc i lost everything. Needless to say, autosave has really been awesome for me!

Now that it can autosave now I can save everything without disrupting my workflow. Doing some random code? Copy into notepad++. Wrote something on forum? copy into notepad++. Doing some accounting? New tab, paste work in the text file.

It is a hassle for me to individually save all these files so I love to just open a new tab, paste, and continue with my work.

I also find that I now usually have two windows - the left and right - in the same instance.

Usually what goes in my left window is a user details page which contains a bunch of vital information I access regularly. But here is an example screenshot of the left-right window process:

Now I find myself doing something even more advanced. I will open up a new instance in notepad++ to have a clean window to work from to organize a new project. I do this by going to Run > Open in another instance. It opens a new instance without messing with my original instance.

There are a couple downsides to this.

1. If I have to restart my pc, I have to close all instances to make sure that I didn't lose anything I pasted in there instead of the main window.
2. I lose any work done on files in there on close so I have top manually copy each one into the original instance.. I would love to have an instance where I have maybe 300 files open from a folder where I can easily search all, but in its separate instance so I just toggle over there.
3. Sometimes I get mixed up and paste whatever I am doing in the wrong instance (instead of the original)
4. Sometimes I have like 7 instances open and it gets confusing to find it
5. Sometimes I get mixed up and paste whatever I am doing in the wrong instance (instead of the original)
6. Sometimes it's hard to find the original instance with many open

Reason I do this like 300 files, which in some new instances is as many as thousands of files, is if I am editing a website for example. Sometimes instead of trying to search for text I will open whole folders of a website and just do a "find all". Some people may not like this, but it works for me. (Update: I was looking around and saw many other people do this too!)

But here is another downside of having my primary window with almost 1000 "new" files open: It isn't organized at all. I find stuff by doing a "Find All in All Opened Documents" function. Which works but is not efficient. But it works.

Please note that I just upgraded to the newest version and I saw the "Workspace Sorting" feature. That does NOT work for me, and I have disabled it! Thank goodness I did not upgrade notepadd++ for a few versions, because the developer added the option to disable that feature in version 7.0.

Something I would really love, is to have something which can manage multiple sessions and autosave an unlimited number of files with super easy drag and drop sorting without having to save the files and make a filename.

Is there anything that can improve my workflow and help me organize thousands of files as well as have new sessions with the fully opened thousands of files in a particular session (instance)?

Basically I don't want to complicate my current workflow with having to do more things (even one or two clicks is too much of a hassle when I do as many things at once as I do), but I would like to be more organized and have a better way of managing new sessions (instances).

Answer 1

Notepad++ will not work this way because you have unsaved files.

When you go to file->Save all, you can save all documents. Find a folder for your temp files, and hold enter to save all files into that folder.

Now you can use menu file->Save session to store that session, and continue to it later.

Either by loading a different session, or by choosing close all, you can stop working with the files.

Do note, by default, notepad++ will start counting from 1 and up when creating a new file. If you save all files, and you close and open a session, and you press new, it will start counting from 1 again, meaning that if you save, it will ask you to override your file.

Unsaved new files will not be stored in sessions. Unsaved existing files will. A session only stores the path to the file.