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Can Notepad++ highlight search results in its scrollbar area, whereby the scrollbar represents the height of the entire document being viewed and is visually marked (colour-coded, ticked or otherwise) relative to where the results occur in the actual document?

Does an option or plugin exist for this?

Some other software programs like Eclipse and Google Chrome implement this kind of high level scrollbar visualization to aid understanding of results in one view.

I found the following example image on the Internet to demonstrate the concept - it's not Notepad++ but shows the scrollbar concept being referred to.

Example of highlighted scrollbar

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3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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There is a plugin for that, it's called "SmartHighlighter" and is part of the jN Plugin suite.

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    Looks like the site has changed and the old listing of plugins doesn't exist anymore. Had to use the Wayback Machine to find it: web.archive.org/web/20140213023146/http://sourceforge.net/apps/…
    – HotN
    Commented Jun 23, 2014 at 14:51
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    To get only the Smart Highlighter and not the other plugins, in the jN\includes folder, move all of the scripts except SmartHighlighter.js and MenuCmds.js into disabled.
    – Arithmomaniac
    Commented Jun 22, 2016 at 15:22
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    to test it I just had to select a text (no need to run the search). I though it did not work because I did not saw the highlights. I needed to change the color to see them: setting/style configurator. In language:global style // in style: smart highlighting set the background color. downloaded here: web.archive.org/web/20131209225342/http://code.google.com/p/…
    – JinSnow
    Commented Mar 12, 2017 at 13:56
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    Plugin works fine for now (npp 7.5.1), and I want to add one detail to @Arithmomaniac comment: if you want Smart Highlighter settings to work, you will also need Dialog.js file.
    – Sam
    Commented Sep 25, 2017 at 12:36
  • URL for install complete plugin: github.com/sieukrem/jn-npp-plugin/wiki/How-to-start
    – Dani
    Commented May 3, 2018 at 18:05
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There's a feature that puts a line marker next to the line numbers.

Search > find. Check the option "mark line".

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  • That's nice but doesn't provide the same high level visual of the entire document at once. Thank you for posting this close second - I might have to be satisfied with it.
    – John K
    Commented Nov 29, 2010 at 3:53
  • You should note that it is a separate search mode, not merely a "feature".
    – Mithaldu
    Commented Aug 10, 2020 at 9:05
  • It does if you also open "Document Map" (view -> Document map) it does exactly what OP wants!
    – mayersdesign
    Commented Jun 24, 2021 at 12:19
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I can't tell you how reliant I have become on Chrome and VS smart-scrollbar. I'm starting to greatly dislike apps that don't have this feature. When I try to enhance Notepad++ it seems to have startup issues.

In doing a search for text editors with this capability I started thinking how I wish there was an editor like the visual studio editor and then discovered something Microsoft released in Nov 2015 called Visual Studio Code.

It's free and I'm wondering now why I hadn't started using it sooner.

Here's the URL: https://code.visualstudio.com

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  • This does not seem to answer the question of how to enable this feature in Notepad++, but rather seems to just encourage using another application altogether.
    – TylerH
    Commented Aug 25, 2021 at 19:55

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