After 28 Years, Microsoft Kills WordPad In Windows

(CTN News) – Earlier today, Microsoft announced that it will deprecate WordPad with a future Windows update since it is no longer under active development, though the company did not specify when exactly this change will take place.

The WordPad application is a basic text-editing application that allows users to create and edit documents with formatted text and can be used to include images and links to other documents in their documents.

The application has been automatically installed on Windows systems since 1995, following the release of Windows 95, allowing users to use a basic word processor as well as a document editor built into the operating system.

For those who don’t need rich text support, the company now recommends using the Microsoft Word app as a replacement for WordPad while Notepad is recommended for those who don’t need it.

“In a future version of Windows, WordPad will no longer be updated and will be removed,” Microsoft announced today.

“In the case of rich text documents like .doc and .rtf, we recommend using Microsoft Word, while in the case of plain text documents like .txt, we recommend using Windows Notepad.”

Since Windows 10 Insider Build 19551 was released in February 2020, and the program has been an optional feature of Windows 10, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that it has been discontinued.

In spite of the fact that it is still installed by default on all Windows operating systems, it is now possible to uninstall it using the control panel ‘Optional features’.

In addition to WordPad’s discontinuation, earlier this year the Qbot malware operation began infecting computers and evading detection by exploiting a DLL hijacking vulnerability in the Windows 10 WordPad application.

Microsoft Store moved paint, Cortana slowly dying

With the release of the Windows 10 Fall Creator’s Update in July 2017, Microsoft also announced that the classic Windows Paint app would be deprecated and removed, resulting in the removal of the classic application from Windows 10.

Despite this, Redmond decided not to completely kill off the app after an outpouring of love for it, instead making it available through the Microsoft Store in an effort to preserve its popularity.

Perhaps Microsoft will also move WordPad to its app store if enough people ask for it, so that it can remain available as a less feature-rich alternative to Microsoft Office and similar software in the future.

In early August 2023, Microsoft officially began killing off the Cortana voice-based assistant in Windows 11 Canary preview builds.

As a digital assistant for Windows, the app is already being replaced by the AI-powered Windows Copilot app which was unveiled at this year’s Build conference in place of this app.

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