Microsoft retires WordPad after 28 years — app no longer available as of Windows 11 24H2

Wordpad always seemed like an annoying and unnecessary half-step between notepad and word to me.
- I liked having the minimal formatting options in WordPad without the bloat of Word.
  
  Wordpad is also able to open large text files without having a stroke. RIP
- Word is now so bloated that I fear using it. It's nice to have Wordpad.
  
  T
  Ah. Are you trying to write about Theodore Roosevelt? Bing can help!
  The
  Here are 10,000 links to Theodore Roosevelt
  The fox....
- its pretty neat if you dont have access to word, which is likely why they want to get rid of it
  
  Doubtful. There are a myriad of free and FOSS options that are available right now to people of even limited technological skill. WordPad isn't damaging their bottom line, but since it's certainly not adding to it, there's no point in maintaining it.
- It was very niche, but it’s great for viewing docs or other light work on a system you don’t want to install a whole office suite onto.
  
  You can still do that but it’s through word webview. Some people won’t like that option.
- Can't say I ever needed it in the 28 years I've been using Windows. I'm sure there are plenty who did, though.
  
  I used it all the time to save text temporarily in. Note worked too, but i like the line break that WordPad had. It made reading and formatting easier.
- As others have said, fast opening quick notes with basic formatting.
  For example, if I get an unexpected call I need to write down more than a call back number, Wordpad was my go to.
  Well, at least when back when I used Windows regularly.
- Microsoft's business model has often gotten in the way of anything they do making sense.
  
  Is there anything left to microsoft that makes sense at this point? Maybe the physical doors to the microsoft offices still function.. after you watch an ad?
- Rtf is far more lightweight than docx. It's closer to markdown.
- It was created for people to open Word docs at home before everyone had Office.
- Best Windows built-in way to open files with Unix end lines.
- In other words: bloat

Microsoft: We can't spy on your usage when you use wordpad, use O365 instead! (guessing since MS recommends using O365 Word in its place).
TBH, I haven't used wordpad since Windows 98. Not saying others don't use it, but Notepad++ and a myriad of other options are better anyway.
- If they just wanted telemetry they'd just "enhance it" they way they did with the monstrosity that is new Paint or AI assisted notepad.
  
  AI assisted Notepad is a thing?
  
  And probably as a security update as well.
- TBH, I haven't used wordpad since Windows 98
  which is why they're getting rid of it
  it would probably be pretty easy to just patch telemetry into it, except nobody uses it because why would you
- Does Notepad++ allow rich text?
  
  On a default install on NP++ you can only save as rtf, but there are addable plugins that give some rtf functionality. So as a direct answer, no, it doesn't, but it can.

What, they couldn't add AI to it?
- You wouldn’t add AI to a hand bag?! You wouldn’t add AI to a car?! You wouldn’t add AI to a baby?! You wouldn’t shoot a police man?! … and then steal his helmet?! … and then add AI to it?!
  
  I do not like to add AI.
  I would not like it here or there.
  I would not like it anywhere.
  I would not add it in a handbag.
  I would not, could not, in a car.
  Not to a baby, not to a helmet.
  Not in my house, Not on a mouse.
  I do not like to add AI.
  I do not now, nor ever will I.
  Do you hear me Microsoft?
  Take your AI and fuck off.
  
  I'd give it to his grieving widow, then add ai to her.

WordPad 3d
- WordPad AI
  
  Thanks for making me throw up in my mouth

Oh get fucked Microsoft. Now I have to use notepad when I put the tape measure on the spacebar so teams doesn’t change my status to idle.
- Just select yourself to chat with in Teams (top option in contacts) and put a battery on the delete key like a professional..
  
  I like the cut of your jib. I’ll put a word in for you with the Bobs.
  
  I'm a frequent host and participant of a meeting for one.

Could they please retire modern Windows UI design?
Those contrasting color squares are not the zen those designers think. UI layout being different in paradigm for every application is not the productivity improvement they think. Using titlebars for something other than titles and control buttons is not optimization. Those buttons being some scratches on the screen barely visible is crap from any PoV I can imagine.
And somebody should explain to them that a good design for a billboard, a good design for a glossy magazine, a good design for a shop front, a good design for an office, a good design for a videogame, a good design for a movie and a good design for a workstation are all mutually incompatible in vast majority of cases.
And again about zen, simplicity, air and all that. I understand they think they are very smart and understanding of aesthetics. But zen would be having clean window borders and clearly visible control elements, for starters. And buttons not being just color squares. And in general solutions being subordinate to functional goals of the UI being usable. Industrial ergonomics are zen.
EDIT: I know it's offtopic, not interested - keep walking
- "We need to recapture the Apple market share!"
  "Got it boss, we'll make it stupid."
  
  It just pains me to see, remember Chinese websites and software around 2007-2008?
  Everybody (aware) looked at that with terror.
  Now it's the same everywhere.
  
  "Get rid of those ugly strain reliefs on the plugs!"
  "Uh, we don't make hardware."
  "I don't care, get rid of them!"
- I remember a while back Microsoft did an market research thing and found that of their brands, "Xbox" had positive consumer feedback while many of their other product names weren't nearly as favorable.
  So what did they do? Did they try to understand what Xbox did differently to leverage that strategy elsewhere? Did they promote the Xbox marketing team to give them a wider purview?
  No. They just renamed Zune Music to Xbox Music and Games for Windows to Xbox for Windows. THAT'LL FIX IT!
  
  And then they tank the name X-Box
- The drop-down text menu with dense options was good design. Adding the quick toolbar for more common tasks was also good design.
  Moving everything from the text menu to the quick toolbar was bad design.
  Just like the evolution of their search functionality. Started as an explorer feature (good), added to the start menu with a focus on program names (good), then they mixed web results from Bing and it's unclear if a program I'm searching for is installed and it found that or if it exists and the result is a link to some website (bad, if I wanted to search the fucking internet, I'd launch a fucking browser), also insisting on using their browser (wtf, they should have been broken up 20 fucking years ago, instead the courts decided to just fucking ignore them doing the same shit they lost the lawsuit for only much worse now).

Wordpad, as I recall, only existed because back in the Windows 95 days nobody had Office and couldn’t open Word documents.
- WordPad in Windows 95 was a demonstration of how to use the rich-text editing component built into Windows. Its C++ source code came bundled with MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes - programming library for making Windows apps using C++) as a sample.
  The fact that it was a useful tool for end users was essentially just a side effect.
- They should preinstall libre office as a replacement.
- people still don't, right? I cant imagine it's very common outside of company computers
  
  Anyone who works for or studies at any organization has it.

- I didn't mind having something light and built in for when I just wanted quickly to create a little rich text doc and not boot up full fat Word and the corresponding jump in resource usage and file size.

They should open-source it, as they did with Calculator.
- Libre office writer is a thing
  
  Another thing. But there's a lot of markdown and other lightweight markup editors.
  
  Yeah, sure, a really nice thing.
  
  As is Abiword, which is a bit more of a direct comparison.

As long as you have notepad, you're good.
- Notepad++
  
  I would have suggested Sublime. But you still can't print with it properly (only with an extension which prints in background with another program). Sure normally you don't need to print code and with missing markup possibilities it's pointless anyway. But sometimes a raw easy list of ideas needs to be printed.
  Now I selfhost a markdown editor just for that usecase.
  
  Is this 2010?
- What if I want rich text?
  
  Too bad, only the poorest text for you.
  
  Have your butler do it for you
  
  Markdown?
  
  You should probably reconsider.
  
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_markup_language
  https://www.markdownguide.org/
  https://typst.app/
  https://asciidoctor.org/
  https://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/usage/restructuredtext/basics.html
  https://orgmode.org/
  Any good missing?
  Well and then there are interactive or side-by-side editors for most of them.
  
  LaTeX is always free and works on many systems.

here's a little known fact about WordPad: It was Microsoft's first word processing program. Originally introduced as an add-on to MS-DOS in 1981, WordPad later became a part of Windows in the 1990s after the release of Windows 95. It was designed to be simpler and more user-friendly than its more advanced counterpart, Microsoft Word.
- WordPad didn't exist until Windows 95. You might be thinking of Microsoft Write, which predated it.
  
  In Windows 95, wordpad was still write.exe, is it possible they just renamed it?

I've used windows since the 90s. Not once have I intentionally used WordPad.
It did open by default for some file types for a long time (.doc), usually mangling the content cause it couldn't actually handle them properly. I think it was also the default for .txt files at some point, causing many curse words when editing plain text files, that invisibly weren't so plain any more after... Programs expecting a configuration fine really don't like that sort of thing.
So: I'm very ok with this. Just install LibreOffice or something if you needa Word-like experience. Install notepad++ for anything "plain".

Still on the last windows os am ever gonna use windows 10
- If you don’t plan to upgrade even after security updates end, what’s keeping you there now?
  
  Am prob gonna use linux fully and secondary os macos (not 100% sure erm) I also meant like windows oses

And so the bloodline of windows write is extinguished
This is kinda sad that if you want to do even basic word processing with Microsoft software, your only option now is an ongoing subscription to do so.
- ...your only option now is an ongoing subscription to do so.
  You can also still buy the Office package without subscription. The latest release is from 2024 and 2021 before that. But of course its expensive for basic stuff.
  
  Oh I didn't actually realise that, I thought they'd just gone full Adobe with office 365

Word pad the goat of somehow interpreting files as not UTF8

And they're making notepad pretty unusable also
- I've had no real issuses with the new notepad.
  I just hope that they don't continue adding too much stuff to it and it becomes the new wordpad and we don't have a basic box to put text anymore.
  
  One of my biggest problems with the new notepad is you've lost using it as a forgettable scratch space. Anything you put in the new Notepad now gets written to your drive, even if you don't save the file.
  You can't type or copy/paste anything sensitive into notepad anymore as a temporary space even if you don't save the file.

I need any note taking app to require at least half a gigabyte of memory

I guess it's to direct more people to Microsoft 365 and Word. I hope that in reality more people will start to use LibreOffice and others.
- I've used windows since dos and have never once used wordpad in my entire life.
  For basic text, notepad is just fine. For anything fancy, wordpad isn't good enough.
  I feel that it doesn't have a place anywhere. It's like the bizarre paint 3D they've recently discontinued.
  
  iirc wordpad had spellcheck which was sort of convenient
- My office had a period where we used LibreOffice and others because of some licensing dispute with Microsoft. However that period of peace ended when we migrated to 365.

Sad to see such a great program go…

idc what people say mswrite was always > wordpad > word

More brilliant decisions from Satya Nadella. 🙄
- It is an obvious maneuver, to be fair to Nadella. Not only will this push more over to subscription based word processing, but it also closes one of the easier avenues useds have to avoid aggregated data farming. Their next move should be to turn Notepad into a complementary tiered program:
  Tier 1) Use at no charge, but your data pays for it instead.
  Tier 2) Notepad becomes an extra pay to unlock feature of 365.

I wonder if anyone thought about looking up WordPal in the Microsoft Store and think about maybe that could be what it evolved into.
- Problem is, it's not installed by default

Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time... A long time.

Sad but expected. Most people are using either office or one of the free alternatives by now.

I hope it's still included on future Windows server versions. It's quite useful to open documentation or instructions included with some software.
- I suppose you could install Word. If you want just Word, you can jump through a few hoops to make the Office Deployment Tool install only Word.
  I don't think that is a reasonable solution for your use case, but I suspect making people use (and buy) the actual Office Suite is the motivation.
  Edit: I see my point has been phrased poorly - I was trying to outline that I suspect MS' point is making people get Word (Office) instead. Maybe I'm just plain wrong on that though.
  
  Notepad ++ is one of the first things I install on any windows system
  
  Installing Word, on a server, running as administrator, forecefully linked to some MS account for activation... Is that really a reasonable solution in a Microsoft world? Smh.
  If documentation comes as Word document there is no documentation and a huge red flag for the software.

i was using it as a screen whenever i was leaving my computer unattended, when i used windows.

Omg i use this to open shitty word docs at work, to dont make it swap much, as the word is a memory hog

Pfew ... I moved to Linux just in time!
- Gnome has already been ruined by a similar failed desire for a clean and simple interface.
  
  Gnome has only gotten better imo
  ¯(ツ)_/¯
  
  That was decades ago, though.

No longer available and no longer integrated are not equivocal.