Wordpad

What is it?

It’s a word processor that was introduced in Windows 95 as a replacement for Microsoft Write and has been part of the operating system ever since. You may remember what it looked like back then (see screenshot below). But it’s not going to be around for much longer.

Microsoft is ditching it then?

Yes. In early September, Microsoft added WordPad to its ‘Deprecated features for Windows client’ list (www.snipca. com/47534), saying it’s “no longer being updated and will be removed in a future release of Windows”.

What does it suggest we use instead?

It recommends Word for rich-text documents (with the file extension .rtf) and Notepad for plain-text documents (.txt).

What’s the difference between rich and plain text?

It’s to do with formatting. Rich-text documents, like those created in WordPad, retain their original formatting – such as font, bold text, italics and margins – when opened in other rich-text programs like Word or LibreOffice Writer. You can see this in the screenshot above right. By contrast the plain-text Notepad has no formatting, making it better for writing quick notes rather than more complex documents. It is ‘plain’ and basic, not ‘rich’ with features.

So if both Word and WordPad are rich-text, what’s the point of the latter?

That’s what many people have asked over the years, and Microsoft now has an answer: there’s very little point to WordPad, so we’re getting rid of it. It’s hardly a surprise. Microsoft did add voice typing to it in Windows 10, but then in 2020 relegated WordPad to the status of an ‘optional feature’, which meant you could remove it from Windows. A sign of how little Microsoft cared for WordPad came the same year, when it added pop-ups to WordPad advertising the online version of Office. It clearly saw the program as little more than a billboard for its other tools.

Do many people still use it?

Microsoft hasn’t published any figures, so it’s impossible to know. But WordPad’s fans like it because it’s a stripped-down alternat