One interesting thing about WordPad (at least from the Windows XP / 7 era) was that it supported the complete OLE2 / ActiveX stack.<p>This let you do all kinds of things like embed other types of controls (like canvases or images from Paint, or Excel tables) inside your document, and WordPad's UI would jump through all the hoops to update and transform into the embedded application's UI when that control gained focus. This made it a pretty useful testing app when I was interning at MS and working on embeddable Inking surfaces for Tablet PC. (Yes, I'm a dinosaur)
I'm always sad to see applications go (especially if the recommended alternative is a paid software), but did that thing ever work properly? In the past decade I used Windows only when someone held a gun to my head, but before that I remember that WordPad always messed up all documents I have ever opened: weird page and line breaks, picture and textbox formatting all over the place, and saving a document was a good way to prevent future reading.
Fun fact: Before WordPad there was Microsoft Write.<p>Typing 'write' in the Run dialog still opens WordPad today. They kept the alias for 28 years.
Off topic, but I'm loving the Mac equivalent, TextEdit.<p>After trying every kind of fancy task management and note taking system from org-mode to Obsidian to Logseq, I now use a .rtfd (.rtf + images) on iCloud to act as a note-taking system / todo-list. I would have used pen and paper but I need to paste screenshots and URLs.<p>There's an iOS app called RTF Write for 99c. Now I always have my notes, tasks, and shopping, and above all, it's so simple and quick.
This is the sort of non-consensual change that is the hallmark of proprietary software and drives me towards using free and open-source software every chance I get.<p>I love WordPad's simplicity, and I'll miss it.
Cannot say if Notepad does it in recent versions, but on older Windows systems Wordpad was useful to quickly open texts made on Linux (with just LF instead of CR+LF) which in Notepad would show as uninterrupted.
Which free/open source alfernatives to WordPad for Windows do you recommend then? LibreOffice is huge and slow, MS Office Online requires Internet. How to edit simple RTF/DOC documents offline on Windows without downloading >300MB full LibreOffice suite? Only Abiword comes to my mind.
Implicit in this is a recognition, or at least a claim, that regular windows users don't have any need to inspect or manipulate anything other than a few file types. Plain text or Office formats, PDF, thats it.<p>That might well be true for 99% of people, but it isn't true for me. I'd like to have an editor built into windows that was way lighter than an IDE but could handle things like JSON, XML, and CSV without sweating.<p>Notepad++ serves that purpose today but would be nice to have it bolted into Windows. Or maybe msft agrees to a giant stipend to the Moolenaar estate (RIP) and licenses Vim with a user friendly keybinding?(!)
> We recommend Microsoft Word for rich text documents like .doc and .rtf<p>Doesn’t Office require a paid license on top of the Windows license, unlike WordPad?
Word pad was basically Word for Windows 6 and was quite usable for basic needs. Really only finally out to pasture by the free Google Docs, I’m sure wordpad killed a decent ecosystem of editors that may one day have competed with Word.
WordPad was always useful to read RTF files, which used to be pretty common. I guess they have been replaced by PDFs at this stage.<p>Would still be nice if Windows had some sort of basic word processor, as WordPad had functionality that many users would still find useful, basically just fonts and headings.
>There’s no reason to be outraged by this decision<p>Actually, I have a reason to be outraged by this decision.<p>I like using WordPad, and it will take me time and effort to find an adequate replacement for a simple note-taking application.
I use Linux and BSD primarily but at my job where we use Windows I actually quite like wordpad.exe/write.exe (same thing?) for dissecting prod logs complete with highlights, formatting, etc.. Once you turn off line spacing and margins, it's quite good and generally pretty fast at wrangling a bunch of text that you may end up emailing via Outlook.
I would normally feel neutral/good about this except Microsoft now removes half useful programs and preinstalls or at least shows the icon of total crap like Instagram in a clean install. I mean, what the fuck.
WordPad was the only thing worse than MS Word. So good riddance. But Windows still desperately needs an ultralight word processor that can do more than Notepad. I dread Word even opening.
It feels like the era when people needed or wanted WordPad has come and gone. If you're satisfied with something simple and don't care about specific Word features or formatting you're probably using Google Docs or OpenOffice or something.
I wonder what program XML files will open in by default instead of WordPad… [0]<p>Maybe XML Notepad? [1]<p>[0] <a href="https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/changing-default-xml-editor-from-wordpad-to/0fc042d5-ef9a-47e7-ba36-e120de1619f0" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/chang...</a><p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/microsoft/XmlNotepad">https://github.com/microsoft/XmlNotepad</a>
Is this somehow symptonatic considering (a presumed lack of) adoption of RTF today, compared to formats such as markdown?<p>I just was hit by the nostalgia of hearing the app name at all
I remember Microsoft Works better!<p>I had it on the first computer that I owned and could do all kinds of stuff with it. Aside from Works I also got some version of Visual Basic. I still remember playing around with those programs.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Works" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Works</a>
Microsoft is slowly removing features, but is it adding any notable features?<p>Here are some examples of features I would like to see:<p>- Native Markdown viewer and editor, to replace Wordpad<p>- Disk space manager - graphically show where my diskspace went; allow me to find and delete large files<p>- Restartable and reliable file copy (similar to rsync on Linux)<p>- Notepad with same features as textarea element in browser, including spellcheck, multilevel undo/redo, completion, etc.<p>- Printing that can stay connected to printers on my local network<p>- Dictionary app (MacOS has it)<p>- Air drop compatible with iPhone<p>- A screenshot tool that allows you to type text (in addition to circling and highlighting and arrows)<p>- No system processes that randomly consume high CPU<p>- Command-line zip<p>- Instant search (Mac has had it for how many years now?)<p>- Stock app (MacOS has it)<p>- Beautiful widgets (like the old Konfabulator) <a href="https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/06/konfabulator/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/06/konfabulator/</a>
Nice to see that TLS 1.0 and 1.1 are also on the list: <a href="https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/whats-new/deprecated-features" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/whats-new/deprecat...</a>
Next to things like Notepad, the Calculator, and Command Prompt, Wordpad is and has been one of the most useful programs ever bundled with Windows in terms of functionality and user-friendliness, so the idea of getting rid of it (even if it gets replaced) just seems kind of asinine.
I know your deeds, that you are neither notepad nor word. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm - neither notepad nor word - I am about to spit you out of my mouth.
I haven’t used Word Pad in over a decade. I suspect a lot of people fall into this camp<p>I don’t see the point of word pad anymore. Its purpose was a lite free alternative to MS Word. With online word processors like Google Docs and even Word online, both of which have free versions that can work offline, it just makes Word Pad entirely pointless especially when there are open source word processors.<p>I feel that this would be a bigger deal if notepad was killed, but then there’s notepad plus.
I must be the only one who didn't know what a WordPad was before reading about it being removed on here.<p>What do you use it for? I can't remember the last time I had to edit a text document that wasn't either pure text (like markdown), a pdf, or an office file. Some people mentioned ".rtf" files in this thread, but I don't believe I've ever heard of one of those being used for anything.
This is a real shame. There's value in simple apps that come bundled with the OS and don't change for years. Wordpad is the simplest way I know to get a sample of a font. My workplace doesn't use Microsoft apps so there's absolutely no chance I'll be able to use their recommended replacement of Word.
I used it on text files with non-windows EOL chars, where notepad would get confused.<p>One of the great things of the windows builtins is trustworthyness: they're always there. Even if notedpad++ is miles better, it can't always be installed, e.g. on a server.
Maybe one day they will even switch to UTF-8[1]?<p>[1] <a href="http://utf8everywhere.org/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://utf8everywhere.org/</a>
in one way, this is a good thing, right? But in another, how do i manage old servers which still use TLS1.0 or TLS1.1... The only browser i can use, most of the time, is Firefox for getting into older IPMI endpoints (old servers that dont get security updates... Thanks HP/Dell...). Guess i will be using a Linux VM for managing that kind of gear now...
Honestly, I'm just waiting for the Linux community to figure itself out with Wayland/X and get a bit more stable and I'll probably be switching. The only question in the air for me is how I'm going to manage my cloud files (I've gotten used to having filesystem sync between multiple devices) as the existing offerings seem more or less meh.
I'm calling it now: Word with ads will ship inbox with future versions of Windows :)<p>Maybe the whole Office suite; if you want a PowerPivot in Excel you'll have to watch a 2 minute unskippable ad for hair loss medication. Totally "private" though, scout's honor.
>There’s no reason to be outraged by this decision, as WordPad has been out-of-date for years and is barely usable for its intended purpose, which was to replace to view and edit rich text files (RTF, or *.rtf).<p>It can open and edit docx files, no? MS has suggested Office as an alternative, but Office costs money, so yes, this is lost functionality.<p>And no I am not interested in uploading my docx files to google docs or microsoft office online to edit them, as they may contain private information.