That free code editor I used for a year finally crashed and took my project with it.

I was using Notepad++ for my first Python projects because it was simple and free. Last Tuesday it froze up and deleted my whole 300-line calculator script when I force closed it. Has anyone else lost work to a basic text editor and switched to something like VS Code or PyCharm?

3 comments

3 Comments

sanchez.mary9d ago

Notepad++ doesn't just nuke files without some sign first. Did the auto-save or backup folder ever have a working version of your script?

michael_green449d ago

Yeah I read somewhere that Notepad++ keeps backup files in %AppData% unless you turn that off manually. So if auto-save was on there should be a copy somewhere, maybe in a folder called 'backup' or 'nppBackup'. Might be worth digging through those before giving up on the script.

owens.anthony9d ago

Funny you mention that, a buddy of mine lost a whole Python script he'd been tweaking for days. He was freaking out, thought it was gone for good. Then I remembered Notepad++ has that backup folder hidden in AppData, just like you said. We checked his AppData/Roaming/Notepad++/backup folder and there it was, a copy from like two hours before he last saved, but it had all the core logic intact. He was able to rebuild the rest from memory, but man, that little backup feature saved his bacon.