Microsoft Planning to Remove WordPad Software from Windows 12 After 30 Years

Highlights

• Microsoft will no longer support the 30-year-old WordPad program and will instead emphasize Microsoft Word and Notepad.
• WordPad will no longer be included in Windows 10.

WordPad, which has been around for over 30 years, will be removed from the next Windows release by Microsoft. Instead, the IT giant is marketing its own, high-priced programs, like Notepad for plain text and Microsoft Word for documents.

Microsoft announced the removal of WordPad in a support notice published. The company wrote: "WordPad will no longer be updated and will be removed in future Windows releases. We recommend Microsoft Word for rich text documents such as .doc and .rtf and Windows Notepad for plain text documents such as .txt."

According to a report by The Verge, WordPad was first introduced as part of Windows 95 in 1995, but the free word processing software has not been updated since the Ribbon interface of Windows 7. WordPad is expected to be removed with the latest version of Windows, which is expected to be Windows 12, which is expected to be released in 2024 with many AI-enabled features.

Notably, the news of WordPad's removal comes days after the company announced that the Notepad app will now offer features such as auto-save and tab recovery.

What other options do users have after uninstalling WordPad?

There is no shortage of applications and services for word processing these days. There are several open source word processors on the market. Some of them are completely free. Speaking of Windows, Microsoft has its own Notepad application for basic word processing, or Microsoft Word (requires a Microsoft 365 subscription) for advanced word processing. Then there's Google Docs, which allows users to edit any Word file format online without even having to download a separate app to your device. Then there's LibreOffice, Zoho Docs, WPS Office and several other third-party word processing applications.

How will it affect users?

First, we don't know many people who use WordPad as a word processing program. Although some users rely on it, there are many options for them to change. This means that downgrading WordPad will not affect users much.