Microsoft has released two new Canary Builds of Windows 11, and both of them appear to spell the end for WordPad, the popular (albeit basic) word processor that Microsoft introduced 28 years ago with Windows 95. WordPad is no longer installed when doing a clean install of the OS, according to the changelog for Preview Build 26040, while a previous version noted that “WordPad will not be reinstallable.”
Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26020 notes:
Starting with this build, the WordPad and People apps will no longer be installed after doing a clean install of the OS. In a future flight, WordPad will be removed on upgrade. WordPad will not be reinstallable. WordPad is a deprecated Windows feature. For more information on the future of the People app, click here.
Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26040 notes:
As we mentioned with Build 26020, WordPad is removed when doing a clean install and now is also removed on upgrade starting with this build.
Microsoft on WordPad’s depreciation, announced on September 1, 2023:
WordPad is no longer being updated and will be removed in a future release of Windows.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.
Discussion (16 replies)
Join Discussion →Lol.
I haven't used it in so long, I forgot it was even there.
Last time was probably in the 90's.
I've used word pad more accidentally than on purpose.
I use it from time to time for quick notes.
Anyone know a good alternative?
Notepad
I use Notepad, WordPad, KDE Kate, Notepad++, Notepadqq, and whatever the f*ck else I find lying around. My brother uses Crimson Editor.
For quick notes. Notepad++
It was useful on systems with no proper word processor installed. You don't necessarily want to install an office suite for a quick edit.
Plus it preserves formatting better than word. When copying text to and from web pages.
Yea if you're trying to preserve the HTML around the text you need something better. For my use normally when I'm scraping data like that I'm putting it into a excel document and want to use my own formatting. ;)
Yeah, lets be fair. Office is expensive, and there is no way in hell I am ever going to subscribe to any software or create a Microsoft Account.
Even the latest traditional non-subscription Office releases seem to require being associated with a Microsoft account, and quite frankly, that will never happen for me. Never creating an online account for what should be offline software. Not in this life, or the next. I can't control what work IT does, but for anything personal? Over my dead body.
Sometimes you have to draw red lines. This is mine. I will die on this hill if I have to.
Forcing the issue, robbing people of their freedoms bit by bit, but doing it slowly so they get used to it will never work on me. It may work on others, but this is something I personally will never put up with or accept.
So, Wordpad was a nice light option to have if you needed it.
You can still install something free like LibreOffice though.
Yea... true but if you need to do professional work... Office rules the day. I'm sure some people swear by iWork from Apple.. or for apple.. I don't even know.
I find I can use LibreOffice for most professional things.
It's not quite as good as Microsoft Office, but it isn't far behind. You need to do some things a little differently, but it's not different bad, just different different (though some people get frustrated and throw up their hands when things aren't identical to what they are used to)
I find it works really well.
That is, until you need to collaborate with someone who uses Microsoft Office. (essentially everyone else) Then everything falls apart.
This is what keeps Microsoft's pseudo-monopoly in place for Office. It's not that the alternatives are terrible. It's that we have allowed a proprietary system to become the de-facto standard. One should never allow anything proprietary to become a standard.
I have an office subscription through work so I don't really need anything else now.
Before that I used both openoffice and libreoffice, and it was always less than optimal. I've had so many issues with formatting not looking as expected when opening office documents or my documents looking trash when someone opened them in MS office.
And hate to admit it but even the UI is much better in MS office than in those alternatives.
I have my reservations too about needing an online account but my line in the sand is needing an online account to log in to the computer. And office works offline you only need the online connection to activate it.
I would not want to install libreoffice for a single use, that's what Wordpad was good for. IDK why is MS hell bent on removing functional tools, like paint or snipping tool, now wordpad too.
Hello. I do agree with better free alternatives, prefer LibreOffice. Having started building computers in a store/shop back in '94 [second career] it was good to have Write in Win3.1 [lite version of Word 6 or earlier] to give some immediate productivity with a new computer. It didn't catch on as good as it should have because WordPerfect was prevalent at the time [taught in colleges where I earlier learned WP5 for DOS] and OEMs were including Microsoft Works in new machines. My first computer in '92 included WP5.1 for Windows. The change to WordPad in Win95 also didn't fare well as Works was still included. An executable for Write is still in Win11 Version 22H2 today but is just a pointer to bring up WordPad.
Haven't used that junk since I discovered Notepad++.
The new Windows Notepad isn't terribad - they obviously pulled some features from Notepad++ - but I'll miss being able to do some basic word processing on a clean build.