Microsoft is removing WordPad from Windows after nearly 30 years

Microsoft is no longer updating WordPad and plans to remove the word processor from a future release of Windows. The software giant will instead recommend Microsoft Word, its paid word processor that has always been far more feature rich than the basic WordPad app that has shipped as part of Windows since Windows 95.

“WordPad is no longer being updated and will be removed in a future release of Windows,” reads a support note published by Microsoft on Friday. “We recommend Microsoft Word for rich text documents like .doc and .rtf and Windows Notepad for plain text documents like .txt.”

News of the WordPad removal comes just a day after Microsoft revealed it’s upgrading Notepad with features like autosave and automatic restoral of tabs. Microsoft updated its Windows Notepad app in 2018 for the first time in years and went on to add tabs to the Windows 11 version.

WordPad hasn’t had the same amount of attention, though. The word processor was updated with Windows 7’s Ribbon UI, but after a slight Windows 8 redesign it hasn’t had any major additions. Microsoft will now remove WordPad entirely in a “future release of Windows,” which will most likely be the Windows 12 version we’re expecting to see in 2024 with plenty of AI-powered features.