Microsoft Is Killing Off WordPad In Windows

[Xploit Machine]

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Microsoft has announced the imminent demise of WordPad in Windows, the application won't be receiving updates moving forward. It's seemingly the season of deprecations and removals when it comes to software developed by big tech. A few days ago, Microsoft made a surprise announcement that it is killing off Visual Studio for Mac. Prior to that, it also revealed a list of features that it is sunsetting in Microsoft Edge, around the time Google announced the end of the Pixel Pass subscription too. Now, Microsoft has decided to get rid of WordPad for Windows.

As spotted by Neowin, Microsoft has quietly updated one of its support documents to highlight that WordPad has reached the end of the road on Windows. The application will no longer be updated and will be removed completely in a "future release" of the operating system. The company is yet to reveal concrete timelines for this deprecation process, but it has urged customers who want to open rich text document extensions like .doc and .rtf to migrate to Microsoft Word, and for those who utilize plain text documents in the .txt format to leverage Notepad instead.

It's difficult to say if the move will impact a significant portion of Windows users. As Microsoft has mentioned, there are other alternatives to WordPad out there. That said, the software does have historical importance; it shipped with Windows 95 along with the first version of Internet Explorer. It replaced Microsoft Write as the basic word processor that comes bundled with Windows, almost three decades ago.

Although WordPad has received a few minor updates over the years, it's mostly a relic at this point since its functionalities have been surpassed easily by alternative, and arguably better, software. It could have been useful for people who wanted a free word processor capable of handling rich text formats, but even those can now be managed through the Office web apps available for free on the cloud. Those who prefer to leverage software installed locally on their machine can also use open-source suites like LibreOffice.​

Source https://www.neowin.net/news/microso...dge-features-windows-11-23h2-review-and-more/

 

[Bighorn]

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.

 

[Xploit Machine]

WordPad is legend .. but I still prefer Notepad in copy pasting codes because it doesn't require specific font designs, as per current forum codes I still use Notepad and Notepad ++ ..

I am proud to say that, I have used every single word processors from Wordstar .. until Microsoft Office 365

 

[davehc]

Wordstar! Lol. The first program (now app), I ever had to install for my organisation. Somewhere around 1980/82 I think.

 

[Bighorn]

WordPad is legend .. but I still prefer Notepad in copy pasting codes because it doesn't require specific font designs, as per current forum codes I still use Notepad and Notepad ++ ..

Notepad was, and may still be, the preferred program for programmers and learners of HTML coding as it added no hidden formatting that could creep up to mess with things. FrontPage was the change for me in creating Web pages. Notepad is good for Font change as it appeared on paper as if written on an IBM Selectric.

 

[Xploit Machine]

Wordstar! Lol. The first program (now app), I ever had to install for my organisation. Somewhere around 1980/82 I think.

Yes, Wordstar was the first wordprocessor that could mail merging at that time which even WordPerfect cannot do .. 1 letter to hundreds of people ..

 

[Xploit Machine]

Notepad was, and may still be, the preferred program for programmers and learners of HTML coding as it added no hidden formatting that could creep up to mess with things. FrontPage was the change for me in creating Web pages. Notepad is good for Font change as it appeared on paper as if written on an IBM Selectric.

Yes, I do still use Microsoft FrontPage, since I dont like'to use blog templates .. I did for about nearly 100 customers, and still keeping their source HTML template safely

 

[Bighorn]

I change away from FrontPage as my Domain Host got away from HTML 4 in favor of HTML 5 so now use Microsoft's Expression Web 4.

 

[Xploit Machine]

There was a software from Microsoft called SharePoint .. but failed ..

 

[Xploit Machine]

A Quick Look Back At WordPad, The Free Word Processor That Microsoft Just Killed

On Friday, Microsoft decided to start the month of September with an announcement that was both unexpected but also one that perhaps has been a long time in coming. The company revealed that it is no longer updating or developing its free WordPad word processor and that future editions of Windows will remove it completely.

Like many of its software and hardware products that Microsoft decided to shut down over the decades, the announcement of WordPad's end was not given any amount of fanfare. It just got a brief mention on the company's Depectated features list. That's too bad because the app has been available for nearly three decades. It was included in all copies of Windows 95, which we mentioned celebrated its 28th anniversary just last week.
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WordPad was actually a replacement for an earlier free word processor, Microsoft Write. It was first bundled with Windows 1.0 back in 1985. It first used Microsoft's proprietary .wri file format but later was able to read and edit .doc files. Like the future WordPad app, Microsoft Write could handle basic word processor functions.

As The Lunduke Journal of Technology website notes, Microsoft tried to release word processors with the Microsoft Write branding as a paid app for Mac PCs and even the Atari ST. The Mac app was actually a stripped-down version of Word, and the Atari ST was just a modified version of Microsoft Word 1.0 for the Mac. Why Microsoft decided to release these products and put the Write branding on them is lost to history.

In any case, Microsoft decided to finally ditch the Write app and included WordPad in Windows 95. There's no info we were able to find on who decided to launch WordPad or who worked on it at Microsoft. However, it seemed to be designed to offer Windows users simple word-processing features that were not available on the company's NotePad text editor.

You could do things like switch fonts, have the text bolded or turned into italics, create a bullet list, or align the text to the left, right, or center of the page. WordPad even supported inserting images and it had a simple paint function. However, it lacked lots of the more advanced features you could find on Microsoft Word, including a spell checker, the creation of tables, and more.

There's one basic feature that wasn't included in WordPad until the version bundled with Windows 7 launched. Before then, WordPad couldn't justify a paragraph. The odd thing about that is that the discontinued Microsoft Write could perform that task. Once again, the reasoning behind the decision to keep the justify function out of WordPad for over a decade is not available.

Microsoft actually released the source code to WordPad just before the release of Windows 95. It was available to download from the MSDN site until it shut down. We we unable to find it on the Microsoft Learn site that replaced MSDN. However, it appears someone has uploaded that code to GitHub.
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Originally, WordPad supported the proprietary .wri file format from the older Microsoft Write app, along with the .txt, .rtf, and .doc formats. Support for the .wri, .rtf, and .doc formats were removed in later versions, but WordPad added support for the newer .docx format, along with the .odt format, with the Windows 7 version. The Windows 10 edition was the first to add support for typing via voice.

However, it was also with the Windows 10 edition that Microsoft decided to make WordPad an optional app for the OS. In 2020, it was revealed that Microsoft was experimenting with including ads with the free WordPad app. However, that rather odd addition was never generally released to the public.

With Friday's quiet announcement of the shutdown of WordPad, Microsoft is likely to make people check out the free edition of Word that's available on the web as a replacement. However, it still feels like the end of an era for this app that slowly became something from an earlier time in Windows history.

Source NeoWin​

 

[Xploit Machine]

Microsoft Will Soon Remove WordPad From Windows 11 & Not Allow Installing It Back
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Microsoft deprecated a lot of Windows features in 2023. One of them was WordPad, the default rich text editor introduced years ago. Most of the time, Microsoft allows users to continue using deprecated features or install them as additional components after their removal. However, this is not the case with WordPad. The company is about to delete WordPad from Windows 11, and it will not allow installing it back. Microsoft announced its plans to get rid of WordPad in the latest Canary build. Starting with build 26020, WordPad is no longer bundled with the operating system. More importantly, Microsoft said the app "will not be reinstallable."
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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.​

Although there will be no official method to restore this good-old, simple text editor, enthusiasts will most likely find a way to shove it back into Windows 11. You can easily find manuals and executables that let you install the stock games from Windows 7, legacy image viewer, and other components. Just make sure you trust the source before installing unknown exe files found on the internet. A similar fate awaits for Steps Recorder (psr.exe). Microsoft is not removing it from the operating system (yet), but there is already a banner with a notification that the app is no longer in active development.

Fortunately, there is no shortage of solid text editors for Windows, both free and premium. Microsoft naturally wants you to sign up for Microsoft 365 to edit doc, rtf, and other text files in Word, but you can also use Office Online for free or jump ship to third-party alternatives. As for Steps Editor, Microsoft suggests using Snipping Tool, Xbox Game Bar, or Microsoft Clipchamp. None of those can fully replace features available in Steps Recorder, so maybe you should look elsewhere.​

 

[Bighorn]

The write.exe file in C:\Windows will probably disappear also.

 

[Xploit Machine]

Actually the write.exe has no serve purpose, the original WordPad has been moved to C:\ProgramFiles\Windows NT\Accessories\wordpad.exe

Executing write .exe is terminated

 

[Bighorn]

Executing write .exe is terminated

Still working on my 3-weeks old Win11 and 3 others, Home and Pro. Executing write.exe in WinKey, Run calls up wordpad.exe, if wordpad.exe is gone should get an error.

 

[Bighorn]

A new news item about Wordpad this morning:

MSN

 

[RogerOver]

Never used it since 20 years !

 

[Bighorn]

An example of a portion of Microsoft's reasoning, as a 'lite' version of Word it is no longer as useful:

 

[The Shadow 2023]

I started using the FREE word processor "Wordpad" many years ago now. Probably around Windows 95.
I liked it for anything that I wanted to print out, in any font, like an office sign, or a shopping list.
I use it so much I put a shortcut to it in my Taskbar on every Windows install.
I have no doubt that if MS doesn't want to supply it any longer, someone else will.
Or I can just use Libre Office, that also has a footprint in my Taskbar.

Long live the programs we love!

Shadow

 

[Bighorn]

I started using the FREE word processor "Wordpad" many years ago now. Probably around Windows 95.

Correct. Before that in Win3.x it was called Write, there's still a write.exe in C:\Windows 10 and 11 that will call up WordPad just like putting iexplore.exe in the Start, Run box in Win11 brings up Edge.