Microsoft has quietly revealed that WordPad, the fundamental phrase processor that’s been included with Home windows since 1995, is being retired.
“WordPad is not being up to date and can be eliminated in a future launch of Home windows,” the Deprecated options for Home windows consumer web page on Microsoft Study notes in a September 1, 2023 addition. “We suggest Microsoft Phrase for wealthy textual content paperwork like .doc and .rtf and Home windows Notepad for plain textual content paperwork like .txt.”
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There’s no cause to be outraged by this resolution, as WordPad has been out-of-date for years and is barely usable for its meant function, which was to switch to view and edit wealthy textual content recordsdata (RTF, or *.rtf). WordPad was launched in Home windows 95 as a alternative for Write, which was bundled with all earlier Home windows variations relationship again to the unique in 1985, and it had two main updates over time: the power to open Microsoft Phrase paperwork in Home windows XP (2001) and a ribbon consumer interface in Home windows 7 (2009).
There have been different updates, in fact, however WordPad appears anachronistic in trendy Home windows variations, like some vestigial reminder of the previous. And whereas Microsoft’s recommendation to make use of Microsoft Phrase as an alternative appears a bit off-base, on condition that Phrase is a paid product, RTF is never used nowadays, and anybody can entry the net variations of Phrase without cost if wanted.
Anyway, it’s fascinating that Microsoft revealed this deprecation individually from any main Home windows model, although that’s not totally distinctive for minor options. And the timing of its removing is unclear. For example, Cortana was deprecated again in 2021 alongside Skype, nevertheless it was solely made non-functional a couple of month in the past and nonetheless hasn’t been faraway from Home windows. (Microsoft additionally just lately introduced that it was deprecating some obscure Edge options just lately.)
