what just happened Microsoft has announced that WordPad is being phased out after being part of the Windows operating systems for almost three decades. The word processor is no longer under development and will be deprecated in a future Windows update.
WordPad is the basic word processor that was released with Windows 95 28 years ago and has been built into virtually every version of the operating system since then. But the program has seen very few updates lately; The last major issue was updating the ribbon UI in Windows 7, and there haven’t been any major issues since the Windows 8 redesign.
WordPad has been an optional Windows feature since the release of Windows 10 Insider Build 19551 in February 2020, meaning it can be uninstalled from the Optional Features Control Panel.
Microsoft has confirmed that WordPad will be decommissioned for the Windows client through an update of its deprecated features list. It confirms that there will be no more updates and that the word processor will be removed in a future version of Windows. That could refer to Windows 12, which is expected to launch next year.
Microsoft still recommends using MS Word for rich text documents such as .doc and .rtf and Windows Notepad for plain text documents such as .txt. It was recently announced that Notepad will have auto-save and auto-tab auto-restore – Microsoft has added the browser tab feature to the Windows 11 version of Notepad, which can also be found in File Explorer.
It’s unlikely that the outcry over WordPad’s death will be as big as it was when Microsoft tried to do the same with Paint. The company announced in 2017 that it was removing the program from Windows and making it a standalone app on the Microsoft Store, hoping that Paint 3D would take its place. But the company reversed its decision: Paint received its first major overhaul in a decade in June, while Paint 3D is obsolete.
Another notable name on the list of deprecated Windows features is Cortana. Support for the speech-based AI assistant ended last month, making way for new AI tools like Windows Copilot