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I tried opening a file of 800MB size in Notepad++. But i don't why Notepad++ showed only 269117242 chars 271450112 bytes . Neither it showed any alert message that it is unable to open such a big file. Then i used wordpad to open the same file, it worked like charm.

But why Notepad++ can't open 800MB file? I assume there must be some setting which says show only this much text.

P.S. Please don't suggest any other software which can open big files. I know they exist.

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    It is in general not a good idea to say something such as what you have mentioned in the postscriptum. "P.S. Please don't suggest any other software which can open big files. I know they exist."
    – bubu
    Oct 1, 2013 at 11:43
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    @bubu I added this text because otherwise you would see lots of answer which will say use this xyz software to open huge files. But this was not my question. I simply wanted to know why Notepad++ can't open.
    – Rakesh Juyal
    Oct 3, 2013 at 9:15

2 Answers 2

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Notepad++ doesn't support huge files, according to this wiki documentation, the problem persists if the component (Scintilla) remains as the core of Notepad++ :

Older versions of Notepad++ may crash while opening very large files. Newer versions (5.2+) will deny opening the file and issue an error message. Why is that?

Notepad++ is based on a component (Scintilla) which is geared towards providing rich text viewing, with syntax highlighting and code folding, as opposed to bulk text services. There are necessary trade offs. Loading a 200MB file will require around 800MB of memory, and the OS may balk at the memory allocation request.

There are basically two ways out:

  • Split the huge file into manageable chunks, and keep only one of them in editor;
  • Use another tool which is tailored to handle massive text files.

If you still manage to open a large file, performance may not be optimal. Here is a couple things to think about:

  • Plugins which analyse and scan text will slow down NP++, disable them if possible
  • Parsing for clickable links on loading the document is slow if the document is large; disabling the clickable links has been reported to significantly help.

Another page on sourceforge also suggests that this problem persists throughout Notepad++'s life, as the community requested to solve this problem:

Why don't you try other software such as gVim? Is there any reason?

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    64 bit gvim at code.google.com/p/vim-win3264
    – CAD bloke
    Feb 27, 2013 at 23:27
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    If Wordpad can open the file, which also allows for rich text editing, I'd say this is a bug in Scintilla. Also gVim appears to be a windowed shim around a console based editor. I would not consider it comparable to NotePad++, which is a fully functional, natively windowed editor.
    – trlkly
    Jun 1, 2014 at 22:35
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    I would look into EditPad Lite. Tho even that only supports up to 2GB files. The Pro version supports larger ones. Very good. Instantly opens the big files.
    – SilentSteel
    Nov 3, 2014 at 16:08
  • @lamwaiman1988, Does the Notepad++ minimalist veresion helps?
    – Pacerier
    Apr 11, 2015 at 8:01
  • @lamwaiman1988 : the gvim official ᴡindows® installer is 32 bits and doesn’t handle large files.
    – user2284570
    Jul 16, 2015 at 20:29
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Syntax highlighting is one of the main sources of slow performance in Notepad++.

If you're about to open a massive HTML, PHP, etc file in Notepad++, then you should first disable the syntax highlighting for that file by going to Language > N > Normal Text.

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You should also disable clickable links. To do that, navigate to Settings > Preferences > MISC. > Clickable Link Settings and uncheck the Enable checkbox.

enter image description here

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