Microsoft has stopped updating WordPad, a fixture of Windows since its 95 version, and will slowly remove the free word processing software, instead recommending its paid Microsoft Word with more features.
“WordPad is no longer being updated and will be removed in a future release of Windows.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.,” Microsoft said in a statement.
The news of the removal comes shortly after the company revealed it was upgrading Notepad with features such as autosave and automatic restoral of tabs. The last update was in 2018 and tabs were added for Windows 11.
WordPad last had an update with Windows 7’s Ribbon UI, and then had a slight redesign for Windows 8, but there has been no attention since.
WordPad will be removed entirely in a “future release of Windows,” most likely Windows 12 expected in 2024 with AI features.
