Microsoft Kills Wordpad 

I really don't know how someone can edit simple text documents without a subscription-based software license and a constant internet connection that definitely isn't used to spy on you. If it didn't benefit us, why would Microsoft want us to use Office so bad?

the monstrous amount of money Microsoft makes from selling people a minimally updated text program that still has the same oddball quirks since 2007 is baffling. Billy G is a genius at legally swindling...

Microsoft Word should just be free to use on Windows if they're seriously going through with this. I don't understand why something so basic and fundamental to using a computer should be behind a paywall in the first place.

Wordpad has been deprecated in favour of Candy Shadow Legends of Crush.

Fun fact: .docx is a zip file containing a very precisely laid out set of text files that are actually XML files, and you can find the document's text in there. If you just want to read a standard word text file, you don't actually need Office. ;'D

You can't just write a simple document. You need to be connected to the internet, you need a paid subscription, you need Windows operating system, you need Microsoft net framework, directx 15, a mouse, keyboard, 8 gigabytes of ram, 4 gigabytes of video memory, discrete graphics card, a 10 gigabit speed ssd, latest windows update, a password, an email, a phone with a working phone number, a phone subscription, quad core processor 64bit. Just to write a word document. Edit: Didn't expect this to blow up. Yes the actual issue is more complicated then this and there are free alternatives. My point is that in modern times; to write a simple document there's many things required now that were not required in the past.

Its over. Windows has fallen. Billons must switch

Can confirm. Games are the only reason I'm still using windows. Without that I'd have long since switched to linux.

Without word pad windows has no native way to read rtf files. This sucks

I love how windows technically is Linux's advertiser now.

Many professions require the use of proprietary software that only runs on Windows. There is no fundamental reason why they must run on Windows, but that is the status quo, just like gaming. It is in this way that Windows is considered the OS that is most suited to productivity: it is viable in the greatest number of professions.

I use notepad, can't recall the last time I used wordpad. I would use openoffice before using wordpad. I've got three notepad files open atm.

8:55, Your description of Microsoft creating a proprietary file extension format, finding a way to monopolize it as the standard across the board, and then shove everyone into the boat to pay money for it; REALLY reminds me of Cory Doctorow's DEFCON speech of "Enshittification".

Wordpad was introduced with Windows 95, replacing Microsoft Write, both of them were for the purpose of handling rich-text documents at a basic level and be a gateway for Word, while offering some Word document compatibility for people like young Mental Outlaw. Interestingly, software pirates also liked it because it also could open regular text files, but unlike Notepad, it displayed them in a monospace font out of the box, so they opened .nfo files with it, at least in the early 2000s. I bet they use Notepad++ nowadays...

They're also ending the Mail app and trying to make everyone switch to Outlook which constantly shows an ad in the first email slot and mucks around how it works in a way that (last I checked) can't be customised. Confused the heck outta my mum when they pushed her onto it until I found the button to change back. It's bad enough trying to turn everything into an ad/subscription service, but forcing it onto people without asking first???

Let's not forget MS silently deprecated stock Calendar and Mail app to replace it for Outlook, just to display ads in it.

This is likely a move in context of push toward subscription models. Wordpad was a viable alternative to word in certain limited contexts. I can 100% imagine a free windows 12 (with added telemetry, especially with the move away from cookies) and having a premium subscription for office + AI co-pilot features

This is nothing guys, wait and see Windows 12 - you will need minimum 16 GB of RAM for it and it will have an AI assistant which will be fed all your data. It's unreal how much Microsoft is tryharding to kill Windows at this point. I really despise Microsoft as a company, I think now they don't even take into account what people actually want from their OS. Even gaming is now possible mostly on Linux and older games work better than on Windows 11 and a lot of newer ones work better even with Wine/Steam Proton running in the background. Amount of bloat/spyware in Windows must be insane for this to actually happen. I also predict they will include built in ads/a monthly subscription for the OS too.

My story is a lot like yours! When we started typing assignments in middle school, I used WordPad. I think I had heard of Word, and when I searched for Word on my computer, WordPad also came up. It didn't tell me I had to activate it the way Word did, so I used it! Having software to write and print rich text documents preinstalled on the machine and simple enough for a child to find and use was so great and it's a damn shame they're taking it away for essentially no reason. FYI I just checked--WordPad DOES allow insertion of images!

ive used wordpad since i was young and on my moms computer typing my autistic ramblings of a story, it has a special place in my heart and is still what i use when im on windows as i refuse to use word [refusal to use microsoft office was something ive always had just because it annoyed me when they had licensing stuff i just wanna type goddamit]. seeing "will be removed in a future version of windows" is heartbreaking, though im sure it will still be available for download on the web for windows if i ever need it.

Teeny flex: The first text editor I remember using is the MS-DOS edit command.

Notepad++ ftw.

Libre office is the chad of document editing suites. I even worked on restriction maps with writer and it worked like a charm. The feature set in regards to marking up text is just as extensive as in word.

Wordpad is kill. No.

That's why I left windows 2 years ago, they stay removing features that we ALL USE. It was a constant fight of restoring all the apps they removed

Such a nostalgija hit, i almost cried, how life was better back then friends... thank yu

It's so sad since finally MS Paint and Notepad are getting the updates they've been needing and then some. MS Paint now has Layers, a Remove Background Option, and a beta AI tool just like photoshop. If only WordPad got the same experience. Sometimes you don't want to load up Word, WordPad was just simple and loaded quicker or simple jobs.

One small thing, The Office Open XML format that Microsoft Office uses isn't actually proprietary it's an open standard, ISO/IEC 29500-1:2016; that's how Libreoffice, Google Docs, etc are able to open and save in those formats. The reason that there's incompatibility is that ironically Microsoft Office breaks the standard.

Microsoft Office, and to a lesser extent, Wordpad, haven't been worth using for a while now anyways. Im not surprised Microsoft wants to kill Wordpad to sell Office 365 subscriptions. I usually use LibreOffice for all of my documents, and then anything that specifically requires a plaintext editor goes straight to Notepad++.

Oh man! Wordpad was the last reason I had to use Windows.... Linux it is. !!!FBG!!!

Office 95 still works on Windows 10. Office 95 runs like lightning. Use Office 95.

Microsoft will do everything except for including a hex editor with Windows. I’m still a diehard notepad user tho

I still use Office 2003. "Nooo you need to upgrade". Nah, I'm good fam.

All you need is the executable, a language file, and maybe the search filter dll. It would be cool if they added WordPad to winget or the "Windows Features" thing.

Windows Notepad is almost a developer steps-after-hello-world demo. It's an editor widget with some menus to open and save the editor widget's buffer to disk. WORDPAD is the Windows 95 Rich Text widget, but with the ability to save to winword6 format. Why Word 6.0 and not any later version? Because when it was created, it was a lightweight built-in word document editor to help cement Microsoft Office for Windows as THE office suite and to finally kill off competitors like Word Perfect for WIndows, AmiPro, and other sometimes better programs. It worked. But once it had done what it was required to do, Wordpad was a competitor for Word for people who truly didn't need more than what WordPad offered them. Word97 changed the .doc format and unless you knew to save your document with Word 6 compatibility, it might not open right in WordPad! That editor widget is still in Windows. It would be really cool if some Windows dev recreated WordPad-possibly with the ability to open later versions of .doc, but defaulting to save in odt, with Word 6.0/WordPad being an alternate save format. Nothing more, just a lightweight and hopefully low-maintenance replacement for WordPad. One exists for Paint, after all.

Wordpad was a saviour when you ran into a file with Unix line endings (CR) instead of windows (CR LF), wordpad was able to display the CR as a linebreak whereas notepad would ignore it and put the whole document on one line. I think recent releases of windows have added support for Unix line endings in notepad.

The second that wine gets good enough to rival windows preformance, windows is dead. The only reason it will still be used is by unkowing consumers, and corperations that are stuck in contracts.

wordbros... it's over...

I was always under the (potentially generous) mindset of MS Word was the premium, feature-rich document editor and Wordpad was the lightweight "it'll do in a pinch" editor if you didn't pay for Word. And that sounded fair. But now Microsoft doesn't even want to give us that. It's now raw text editing or our $160 document editor. Also, that $160 is only good for a single device and no other Office Suite tools. Not unless you want the subscription.

the most basic thing to use because its too easy thats why they getting ridding of it

Before Wordpad there was Write. RIP Write. :) And now RIP Wordpad.

Actually you can insert images into wordpad, its what I use to capture alot of error reports on windows. I have to work in a windows environment and when I get an error I need to document it I first go to wordpad, since it will take screen shots and clippings and will fire up about 50x faster than Word. I also use it to start alot of documents that will eventually end up in a Word doc simply because it's faster than Word and has mostly everything I need. If it had a spell checker I'd never open Word again, or at least I wouldn't have before this news. Word is the king of bloat ware. My first computer was a Gateway 486/66 with WIndows 3.11 and a copy of MS Office (version 4 or 5) and I swear it would open its version of Word and run it 10x faster than my current work i7 computer with Office 365. And every feature in Word 365 that has been added in the 30 years between these two releases I have no need for.

Wordpad got me through high school. Not as barebones as Notepad, and not as feature rich as MS Word. It had just enough features so you could do your assignments.

Word isn't a word editor but a word processor.

I used wordpad way back in 2015-16 to modify Besiege wheel and spring values by opening the machine's save file in WordPad, and was close to my first experience with even looking at code. Fond memories!

I remember using WordPad in College because I already had to pay for the Adobe Creative Suite and my source of income was a minimum wage job at the movie theater, I didn't want to blow all of my money on subscription services and have nothing saved up for any unexpected expenses, like when my laptop was being held together with glue and tape. School kept using us to use Microsoft Word because, "It's the professional standard and we need you to know how to use it!" I just did everything through Wordpad to save money. The school was already doing everything it could to take every penny we had, I wasn't about to pay for that.

msword had such an aggressive auto correct/complete BS it was a pain editing stuffs so definitely liked the wordpad

1:32 It's me! (in the "licensed to" section) :D

This is the equivalent of that one time Mr. Krabs charged Squidward for breathing.

I switched to Linux mint and have ZERO regrets. Proton with steam allows me to play all my favorite games hassle-free and as a normal PC user there’s no reason I need to dive into command prompt for anything I can’t just look up online. It’s been great! Fucking windows wouldn’t let me stop updates so I fucking deleted their shit, pirated windows on an old laptop that CANT update in case I ever need it, and will never go back.

this is exactly how I feel about .PDF. .PDF is the standard for any documents you're expected to fill out. Are you broke and applying for your first job? fill out this proprietary .pdf file, and e-sign your name at the bottom.. what?! how?! what do I use? im broke and don't have a PC, that's why I'm applying for this job.. can my phone do it? Adobe Acrobat is $20 PER MONTH? Even computer savvy people can't easily fill out, let alone sign a .PDF. and when someone sends my parents one to fill out? forget it. How we let a proprietary closed standard with astronomical pricing become the default for....TEXT of all things is beyond me..

Funny enough your runescape anecdote hit me hard. I was the same way - a little game called asheron's call essentially taught me how to type. trying to play that game and typing with two fingers didn't fly, and I adapted quickly and just figured it out. couldn't exactly dodge projectiles and talk to your group at the same time otherwise.

I knew this was coming that's why I dropped Windows six years ago. It has taken me all this time to prepare myself for the awful news.

Why not just use HTML for documents then? -Opens in all web browsers equally (unless you are doing unnecessarily complicated stuff) -Pictures can be inserted from local or web -Supports formatting and tables -Supports links to other documents -Editable with anything that can read/write plain text documents: or web browsers (on desktop)

My first text editor was EDLIN in DOS. This was eventually replaced by DOS Editor. I also recall writing school reports in Microsoft Word for DOS, though I do not recall the version anymore.

The force that keeps Microsoft alive is enterprise network admins not being willing to learn anything but windows domain. Resulting in windows being what people use at work.

At this point I have already switched to Linux, specifically Mint, in which I installed Office 2010 through Wine and works flawlessly.

An issue that people often do not bring up is that these alternative programs will fail to properly save the file in docx format, resulting in abnormalities across programs. I would not put it past Microsoft to implement changes that would intentionally cause problems for other programs when reading/saving documents from third party applications.

I can't count how many times i've heard "The only reason I use windows is gaming". That really is all it has going for it right now. And I know about proton and wine, but not everything is compatible. Other than gaming, you can do everything else on Linux. Or any other OS, for that matter. HaikuOS is getting pretty stable these days too.

When I touch any windows system I feel the ick

What's the going rate for cabins in the woods

Can't believe somebody else had the same struggle with doc files between Word and Wordpad

I don't see this as a problem. WordPad will probably still be offered like Windows Media Player as an "Additional package", installable from the Control Panel / Settings Application WordPad has not been updated since at least 2009 when Windows 7 was released LibreOffice, OnlyOffice and others exist Most people will probably just edit text documents online via Google Docs, Microsoft office Online (via OneDrive) or Apple Pages (via iCloud) Pretty much all OEM-windows computers come shipped with the free version of Microsoft Office which is a UWP application that was originally developed for Windows 10 Mobile back in 2015 (same as the iOS & Android applications), so unless it's changed since the discontinuation of Windows 10 Mobile in January 2020, I don't think you need an internet connection to use this application (I do not have it installed). I should also add that the file formats *DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, XLSM, ODT, KRA (Krita)* and others using the OpenXML standard are just compressed folders which can be opened by applications such as 7-Zip or Ark or really any Archival software using the "Open Inside" feature so it's not like anyone is getting screwed, unless you use a 30 year old WordPad plugin or something.

This made me think - unless I need to write an official document with pretty formatting, I really only use Markdown. I don't think I've opened Writer in months.

This is why I write all my novels in Markdown and LaTeX

I remember when wordpad added support for .doc, it was a big deal as before it could only do .txt and.rtf files. I bet there was a huge fight internally over that, or if it was a random rouge dev that just added to the .doc support in their own and I wasn't noticed till shipped.

My problem with Windows is that cad software normally only works on Windows

They can't keep getting away with this

MICROSOFT IS A MONSTER

Am I the only one who has actually always hated Wordpad? I never saw the point of it. It's not as lightweight as notepad, and not as powerful as MS Word, it's literally the worst of both worlds

I will switch to linux eventually. The only thing stopping most people including me is how much of a pain it is

noooooooooooooo

iTz pretty obvious why Microsoft went down this direction of a subscription for notepad & it has nothing to do wif money. Just look at the path other companies have took for yr answer. They're all following the same new anti-consumer/pro-establishment protocol

This is why I'm still on Windows 7.

That's a surprise. Microsoft, out of everyone, should know that the #1 way of hooking people into a subscription is to offer a freemium tier. By removing Wordpad, they've removed the freemium Microsoft Word... It's like they've fallen from grace so hard, they forgot how to even follow their own business model. And I'm all here for that.

I got Office 2019 though a student discount. They still make a non-subscription (and offline) version of Office. Can get it cheap though certain websites like G2A, but that's obviously a gray area. I would rather use LibreOffice on Linux, but when I go look at its DOCX (or any other MS office file format) on Microsoft Office, it's all messed up, even when I use the Microsoft fonts. That's an issue if you have to send files to someone else, who is likely not using LibreOffice.

Linux 100% since 2005. ZERO REGRETS!

VBScript as well is gonna be a prob for companies. Tons I've worked for, to do basic scripting especially cross applications like Excel/Word, VBScript was the go to for any not in the development department. If they remove VBScript it's going to break TONS of internal office functionality and automation scripts around the world.

My favorite Microsoft text editor was the old dos edit. Wordpad was useful over the years for sure. Essentially it replaced the old write.exe for windows 3.x. Handled bigger files than notepad. I never figured out emacs. vi has more or less been my "go to" since the late 90s.

My New Year's resolution is using Arch Linux only, even for gaming, so far it works.

Remove notepad Remove Word Remove Paint Remove Image viewer Remove... everything, I guess? What Windows is actually doing? What is inside that OS? A shitty UI and Cortana/Copilot? A web browser that you'll replace immediately after installing OS?

Vim - a text editor Emacs - an operating system

You are KIDDING me. WordPad is SUCH a great product. Notepad is simpe, it's easy, but WordPad gives you more functionality. I don't always want to launch Word as if I'm gonna sit down and start writing my PhD, but Notepad doesn't do quite the job. WordPad is just perfect. God damn it, Microsoft.

To be honest this is the first time when I heard about the Wordpad and in my opinion if there is a person affected by the loss of Wordpad, he will quickly realize that Libre Office exists. I understand your feelings about the situation and totally agree with you, but unfortunately people will not care, because some have already got MS Office and others will find another solution faster than they would even start complaining about the loss.

Big wins for Mac and Linux. Win for Mac because Pages, Numbers, and Keynote are free to use on the system or online with just an iCloud account. And I think they are compatible with docx, xlsx, and pptx, respectively.

sadly, alot of CAD, design and creative editing software are only available windows and mac, i know that we can use wine and VMs but its not the same, wine doesn't always work and VMs require alot of resources most of the time for most computers to handle to be able to run as smooth as native software, so i have a windows installation not just for games but for a bunch of other software too that i cant work without.

Historically, the PURPOSE of a computer was text editing. What do you do with a computer? Create and save text documents. Text editors were around before the graphical OS. They're removing the only feature of the first operating systems. We've truly gone full circle.

nice work on all the b roll

Open Office used to be a pretty good replacement for Microsoft's stuff. I haven't used it in years, but it had most of the Office suite.

Ah, good old typing. True story. I attended school, where we had all ten fingers typing as a subject. I hated the teacher, because I was slow and prone to errors. Well, I fell for a girl and summer holiday came. We would chat all the time over Skype throughout that holiday. Come next year, and I still make the most errors typing... but am also the fastest typer in the school... That was a fun first class with the teach, who, ofcourse, wanted to claim responsebility for my typing speed, but nope, that was the girl I wanted to marry.

Wordpad was a nice upgrade from Notepad, since notepad struggled with large files.

I personally use Notepad the most. It is simple and gets the job done.

I had been using wordpad instead of word for 3 years till I was 15 without even knowing it. It was my friend who showed me that word and wordpad were different things and honestly, at that time, I didn't see a lot of difference mostly because I did not need so much functionality. Hate to see it go. 😔😔

I hate Wordpad. Long live Notepad!

I always liked WordPad because it's simple, but not too simple. Notepad is good for just text editing and no more, which is good. Word is good for flexible text things with automations and things for serious professional documents, which is good too. And WordPad was perfect for small things where you would still like to highlight things, like lectures, essays, etc. Sure, Word works for that too, but it's just too heavy. WordPad was the perfect text editor to me and I used it the most, it's sad to see how it gets removed like that

XP was my first OS and I never knew that even existed.

Microsoft needs to stop making decisions for us, like the forced updates. Someone had to say it.

I remember Wordpad in Win 98 but I had no idea all my OS had wordpad until now... truly an educative channel

Totally agree with you! Have been using libre office for a year now and never went back to Microsoft word again XD

thats it im going to pirate things they want to take from me which i legally own