Microsoft’s WordPad Retirement Marks End of an Era
Microsoft is discontinuing WordPad in the Windows ecosystem.
It appears to be a season of deprecations and eliminations within the realm of software created by major tech corporations. Recently, Microsoft took everyone by surprise by announcing the discontinuation of Visual Studio for Mac. Prior to that, it unveiled a list of features set to sunset in Microsoft Edge, coinciding with Google’s announcement of the termination of the Pixel Pass subscription. Now, Microsoft has made the decision to retire WordPad for Windows.
As reported by Neowin, Microsoft discreetly updated one of its support documents to signify that WordPad has reached the end of its journey on Windows. This application will no longer receive updates and will eventually be entirely phased out in a “forthcoming release” of the operating system. While the company has not yet disclosed specific timelines for this deprecation process, it strongly encourages users who need to access rich text document extensions like .doc and .rtf to transition to Microsoft Word. Similarly, for those who utilize plain text documents in the .txt format, the recommendation is to turn to Notepad.
Determining whether this move will significantly impact a substantial portion of Windows users is challenging. As Microsoft has indicated, there are alternative solutions to WordPad readily available. Nevertheless, it’s worth acknowledging the historical significance of this software. It was originally shipped with Windows 95 alongside the first version of Internet Explorer and replaced Microsoft Write as the fundamental word processing application bundled with Windows, nearly three decades ago.
Although WordPad has received a few minor updates over the years, it has now become somewhat of an artifact. Its functionalities have been effortlessly surpassed by alternative, and arguably superior, software options. Even those in need of a free word processor capable of handling rich text formats can now do so through the Office web apps, which are available for free in the cloud. Those who prefer locally installed software on their machines can also explore open-source suites like LibreOffice.
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