WordPad will no longer receive updates from Microsoft, and the word processor will be eliminated from a later version of Windows. Instead of the simple WordPad utility that has come preinstalled with Windows since Windows 95, the software giant will advise using Microsoft Word, a premium word processor that has always been significantly more feature-rich.
WordPad will be eliminated in a future version of Windows, according to a support letter released by Microsoft on Friday. “We recommend Windows Notepad for plain text files like.txt and Microsoft Word for rich text files like.doc and.rtf.”
A day after Microsoft stated it was updating Notepad with features like autosave and automatic restoral of tabs, news of WordPad’s elimination broke. For the first time in a long time, Microsoft updated the Windows Notepad program in 2018 and later added tabs to the Windows 11 edition.
However, WordPad hasn’t received as much attention. After a minor Windows 8 revamp, the word processor hasn’t seen any significant updates since it was updated with Windows 7’s Ribbon user interface. In a “future release of Windows,” most likely the Windows 12 version we anticipate seeing in 2024 with a ton of AI-powered features, Microsoft will now completely delete WordPad.