Microsoft Hits ‘Delete’ On WordPad After Nearly Three Decades
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Microsoft is pressing the backspace button on WordPad, its basic word processor that has lived in computers since 1995.
The announcement in buried in the tech giant’s latest documentation for “deprecated” features, a sign of how the simple text-editing software had creeped into obsoletion. While WordPad had been preloaded in machines operating with Windows 95 and later, it eventually became an optional program that users could delete if they felt it was taking up unnecessary space.
WordPad enabled users to type and edit in rich text formats, making it a decent tool for note-taking. However, it lacked more advanced but important features like a spell-checker.
Microsoft is removing WordPad from Windows after nearly 30 years pic.twitter.com/qhsN7sbxva
— Pubity (@pubity) September 4, 2023
Microsoft has now confirmed that WordPad “is no longer being updated” and will be phased out in future Windows versions.
In the software’s stead, the company urges users to turn to the more powerful Microsoft Word to craft rich text documents, and the built-in Notepad app for plain text documents.
“We recommend Microsoft Word for rich text documents like .doc and .rtf and Windows Notepad for plain text documents like .txt,” Microsoft notes.
The beloved Paint software nearly shared a similar fate as its text-based counterpart five years ago. Thankfully, users retaliated, which pushed Microsoft to move the app into the Microsoft Store.
[via Mashable and Bleeping Computer, images via various sources]
