Wordpad, the word processing program released with Windows 95 in 1995, is discontinued after 28 years. Microsoft Word’s “little brother” will no longer be updated and will be completely removed from the operating system with a future Windows update, Microsoft announced in .
Microsoft recommends using Microsoft Word for rich text documents such as .doc and .rtf files, and Windows Notepad for plain text documents (.rtf). The free Wordpad has become compatible with more and more file formats over the years. Now it’s over with the pre-installed word processing program, like Microsoft announced on Friday.
Date of removal unknown
The company did not say when Microsoft Wordpad plans to remove it via an update. Under Windows 10, the program can be removed manually for a long time, as well as under Windows 11.
Wordpad is usually perfectly adequate for simple word processing, but offers significantly fewer functions than Microsoft Word. LibreOffice, OpenOffice or Google Docs are now also available as free alternatives.
(bme)
