Microsoft has announced that they are sunsetting Microsoft WordPad. WordPad is a rich-text editor that has been shipped out with every Windows release for free. It essentially was a lightweight version of Microsoft Word and was first released with Windows 95.
Initially, Windows had a software named Microsoft Write. This was replaced by WordPad which has been present for the last 28 years. WordPad has been receiving updates and redesigns consistently up until Windows 8.
In recent years Notepad has been made a better program and regularly receives updates including new features in Windows 10. Furthermore, Word is available free online. Having not received an update in the last decade, it is safe to say WordPad has long been replaced by Notepad. Hence, the announcement was no big surprise.
The next new version of Windows is expected to come next year. Microsoft has not given a timeline for deprecating the program. However, it is a safe bet that the next Windows version will not have the program.
Microsoft documentation states: “ WordPad is no longer being updated and will be removed in a future release of Windows. We recommend Microsoft Word for rich text documents like .doc and .rtf and Windows Notepad for plain text documents like .txt.
