28 years ago, Microsoft announced WordPad, the successor to another text editor called Microsoft Write. WordPad arrived as part of Windows 95, the newest and most advanced operating system around at the time. Since then, WordPad has been available on all versions of Windows, providing users with basic text editing capabilities while supporting popular formats such as RTF, DOC, ODT, and others. Nearly three decades later, Microsoft announced that it would discontinue WordPad.
Microsoft has updated the official documentation with notice About retiring WordPad, note that WordPad is no longer in development, will not receive new features or updates, and a future Windows update will remove the program from the operating system.
“WordPad is no longer up-to-date and will be removed in a future release of Windows. We recommend Microsoft Word for rich text documents such as .doc and .rtf, and Windows Notepad for plain text documents such as .txt.”
Fortunately, there is no shortage of first- and third-party alternatives to WordPad. You can use Notepad for basic text editing (the application recently received an interface with tabs and automatic session saving) or choose more advanced editors, such as Microsoft Word. The latter is available for free on the web or as a standalone app in your Microsoft 365 subscription.
The notebook isn’t the only component Microsoft is removing from Windows. The company recently retired Cortana, its neglected voice assistant, and announced the end of the Microsoft Support Diagnostics Tool (MSDT). Additionally, Microsoft will soon disable legacy Transport Layer Security protocols to make Windows 11 more secure.
You can learn more about discontinued Windows features at Official documents. Note that deprecation and feature removal are two different processes, which means WordPad will remain accessible for some time before Microsoft removes it from Windows. Furthermore, Windows fans will likely find a way to bring back WordPad for those who aren’t willing to give up this thirty-year-old application for something more modern.
