Monday 4 September 2023

Microsoft to remove almost 30 year old WordPad in a future Windows OS release

 WordPad, a free basic word processor, has been a part of the Windows operating system for almost 30 years.

Microsoft has officially confirmed the removal of WordPad from future releases of the Windows operating system. WordPad, a free basic word processor, has been a part of the Windows operating system for almost 30 years, originally introduced back in 1995 along with Windows 95.

With the official removal of WordPad, Microsoft will continue to promote its paid alternative and feature-rich Microsoft Word, which is a part of the Office 365 subscription.

An official support note from Microsoft states:

“WordPad is no longer being updated and will be removed in a future release of Windows. We recommend Microsoft Word for rich text documents like .doc and .rtf and Windows Notepad for plain text documents like .txt.”

Around the same time, Microsoft added several new capabilities to its free-tier Notepad, which now supports auto-save and auto-restore of tabs. However, unlike WordPad, Notepad does not support rich text document formats and is limited to .txt. Therefore, anyone planning on doing serious work should opt for Microsoft Word.

The last major update for WordPad was during the Windows 7 release, where the dated UI was replaced with the Ribbon UI, giving it a whole new and futuristic look. However, since then, Microsoft has shifted its focus away from WordPad in favour of Microsoft Word.

Microsoft recently deprecated the standalone Cortana app, the virtual assistant, possibly in favour of Bing Chat, powered by ChatGPT. According to reports, the Redmond giant is currently working on Windows 12 OS, the successor to Windows 11, which is expected to be released in early 2024.

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