Microsoft Removing WordPad from Windows After 30 Years

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Microsoft said it will no longer be updating WordPad and plans to remove the word processor from future releases of Windows. The company will instead recommend Microsoft Word, its paid word processing program with far more features that WordPad, a basic app that has shipped as part of Windows since the release of Windows 95.

"WordPad is no longer being updated and will be removed in a future release of Windows," a support note published by Microsoft as quoted by The Verge on September 3."We recommend Microsoft Word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 said it would be upgrading Notepad. The program will have features like autosave and automatic restoration of tabs. Microsoft updated its Windows Notepad app in 2018 for the first time in years and has added tabs to the Windows 11 version.

WordPad on the other hand did not receive the same amount of attention. While it was given an update with Windows 7's Ribbon UI and a slight redesign with Windows 8, there has been no major addition since.

Microsoft will now remove WordPad entirely in future releases of Windows, most likely the Windows 12 version, expected to launch in 2024 with plenty of AI-supported features.

RIRI RAHAYU | NUR KHASANAH APRILIANI

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