Notepad++: block comment not working

Question

I am running Notepad++ 5.8.5 on Windows 7, editing Perl programs. I would like to comment out a block of text lines (and later, perhaps, uncomment it).
None of the following works: CTRL+K, CTRL+Q, CTRL+shift+K, CTRL+shift+Q,
selecting the block of lines and going to the menu: edit-> Comment/Uncomment -> Block Comment

none of the above has any effect.
What to do?

Solution 1

Why not try updating to a newer version? That's horribly out of date (a year old).

Solution 2

Is NP++ interpreting your file as Perl or plain text?

If NP++ is treating your file as plain text, then language specific things like that won't work.

You may want to double-check that as described here.

Solution 3

Define your own language to match to the file extension, in your case it is: txt and then define any comment style you want. Then close and open NP++ again. Enjoy!

Path: Language--->Define your Language --> Comments & Number tab Hank Wei

Comments

[Helen Craigman]

I upgraded to current version, tried it and it worked. Thank you, @Oesor. By the way, one year old software is not that "horrible", and shouldn't have simple bugs.

[Kickaha]

Terrible answer when you have the current version and it still does not work. v 7.5.3

[Banderi]

Yeah, newer version is not working either. Update didn't fix.