Microsoft is no longer updating WordPad and intends to remove it from a future release of Windows. Instead, Microsoft Word, a paid word processor that has always been far more feature rich than the basic WordPad tool that has shipped as part of Windows since Windows 95, would be recommended.
“WordPad is no longer being updated and will be removed in a future release of Windows,” Microsoft said in a support statement issued on Friday. “We recommend Microsoft Word for rich text documents like.doc and.rtf, and Windows Notepad for plain text files like.txt.”
The withdrawal of WordPad comes just a day after Microsoft announced that Notepad will be upgraded with features such as autosave and automatic tab restoral. For the first time in years, Microsoft updated its Windows Notepad software in 2018, adding tabs to the Windows 11 edition.
WordPad, on the other hand, has received less attention. The word processor was upgraded with Windows 7’s Ribbon UI, but after a minor Windows 8 revamp, there have been no major changes. Microsoft will now delete WordPad totally in a “future release of Windows,” which will most likely be the Windows 12 edition we’re anticipating in 2024, which will have a slew of AI-powered features.
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