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intellij-ideaeditor

Open file in an external editor from within IntelliJ Idea

How can you open a file in an external editor from within IntelliJ IDEA? Is it possible without a plugin?

N.B.: My main motivation is that the "Add Data Source" dialog is stupidly modal so I cannot simply copy and paste the URL, name and password from my configuration file, so I need to open the application.properties or helm\values.yml in an external editor :)

Solution

    1. In IntelliJ menu, go to File | Settings | Tools | External Tools.

    2. Click on the + button to add a new external tool:

      enter image description here

    3. Fill in the parameters:

      Parameter Value
      Program path-to-your-external-editor, e.g.
      C:\Program Files\Notepad++\notepad++.exe
      Arguments $FilePath$
      Working directory $ProjectFileDir$

      enter image description here

    4. Select the requested file, right button, External Tools | your-external-editor:

      enter image description here