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07.01.2024 14:46, Vladimir Fetisov
The WordPad text editor has been a part of Windows for almost 30 years, first appearing in Windows 95. Now Microsoft has announced the removal of this tool, which, although it did not have the capabilities of Word, was still more functional than Notepad. The message about the upcoming removal of WordPad is contained in the description of the Windows 11 test build number 26020, which is available to Insiders on the Insider Preview channel.
Image Source: Dua Rashid/Gizmodo
WordPad has been present in Windows for several decades and has been positioned in two ways during that time. It was initially marketed as a simple text editor with some Word features, and later as an advanced version of Notepad.
“We recommend using Microsoft Word for interacting with rich text documents such as .doc and .rtf, and Notepad for simple text documents such as .txt.”, Microsoft said in a statement. This message somewhat hints that Microsoft understands that WordPad has long been a cross between Word and Notepad, and it needs to get rid of it. Of course, this is just speculation and Microsoft probably has more compelling reasons for removing WordPad from Windows.
It is curious that WordPad was one of the few Windows applications that did not receive support for dark mode, which also indirectly indicated the developers’ intention to get rid of the text editor. At the same time, Notepad recently received support for dark mode, and an autosave function should appear in it in the near future. This indicates that Microsoft will continue to develop this application further. In addition to this, Microsoft will remove the People app from Windows, mainly due to the fact that most of its functionality has been moved to Outlook.
