After 28 Years, Microsoft Announces it Will Remove WordPad From Windows (thurrott.com) 120
"Microsoft has quietly revealed that WordPad, the basic word processor that's been included with Windows since 1995, is being retired," reports Windows blog Paul Thurrott:
"WordPad is no longer being updated and will be removed in a future release of Windows," the Deprecated features for Windows client page on Microsoft Learn notes in a September 1, 2023 addition. "We recommend Microsoft Word for rich text documents like .doc and .rtf and Windows Notepad for plain text documents like .txt...."
[W]hile Microsoft's advice to use Microsoft Word instead seems a bit off-base, given that Word is a paid product, RTF is rarely used these days, and anyone can access the web versions of Word for free if needed.
The actual date of removal is unclear. But Neowin isn't the only thing Microsoft is removing from Windows: The company recently turned off Cortana, its neglected voice assistant, and announced the end of Microsoft Support Diagnostic Tool (MSDT). Also, Microsoft will soon disable old Transport Layer Security protocols to make Windows 11 more secure.
[W]hile Microsoft's advice to use Microsoft Word instead seems a bit off-base, given that Word is a paid product, RTF is rarely used these days, and anyone can access the web versions of Word for free if needed.
The actual date of removal is unclear. But Neowin isn't the only thing Microsoft is removing from Windows: The company recently turned off Cortana, its neglected voice assistant, and announced the end of Microsoft Support Diagnostic Tool (MSDT). Also, Microsoft will soon disable old Transport Layer Security protocols to make Windows 11 more secure.
ok i wanna hear from wordpad users if they exist. (Score:5, Insightful)
i remember when MicroSoft was threeatening to remove MS Paint and people cried out. And I get it -- at least people use that for the memes, and i guess maybe for some people it's the quickest possible method of putting an arrow or circle on a screenshot?
And I can certainly see Notepad's usefulness, a momentary stash for some plain text. I also use it to remove the formatting from text that i'm copy-pasting (ctrl-shift-v often doesn't work!)
But I don't see what niche Wordpad fills. I know yall are out there. speak up.
Re:ok i wanna hear from wordpad users if they exis (Score:5, Insightful)
Last time I checked, Wordpad would correctly autodetect and display text files with Unix line breaks on Windows, and Notepad wouldn't. If they have fixed that then I won't miss Wordpad. Sometimes I need to view such a file on a system where I'm not allowed to install additional software. Those systems usually have Office, and Word will display such a file correctly, so it's not a dealbreaker — but I do hate to load big fat Word just to display a text file.
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Those systems usually have Office, and Word will display such a file correctly, so it's not a dealbreaker — but I do hate to load big fat Word just to display a text file.
Many average home users do not install Office. Many business install Office. Some people will miss it.
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They can get a full blown word processor for free if they download LibreOffice. Not only that, it will load all their RTF files.
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Many average home users do not install Office. Many business install Office. Some people will miss it.
Microsoft once offered a cheap and light-weight alternative to Office called MS Works that many non-business users installed on their systems. Sadly, not anymore, AFAIK. And other companies offered similar products for Windows users too, for example Claris/Apple Works.
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Last time I checked, Wordpad would correctly autodetect and display text files with Unix line breaks on Windows, and Notepad wouldn't.
That's the only reason I ever used Wordpad.
Re:ok i wanna hear from wordpad users if they exis (Score:5, Informative)
The updated Notepad handles Windows, Unix, and Ancient Mac line endings correctly. Also, unlike Slashdot, it also supports Unicode.
Re:ok i wanna hear from wordpad users if they exis (Score:5, Informative)
I highly recommend Notepad++. It's an opensource editor with lots of bells and whistles to handle both your light text requirements and your coding needs. I especially like the plugin that allows me to access remote files via ssh. It automatically detects the type of line break used when you open a file and will continue to use that style as you make changes.
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It's great for coding. It's not so great for writing.
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Which is why I specifically said "light text requirements". I use it for taking on the fly notes all the time. I would never use it for writing extensive documents.
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Honestly, just try it. It may be a good fit for you, or it may be not. YMMV.
It does have a lot of helpful addons specifically for programming in various langauges too.
Re: ok i wanna hear from wordpad users if they exi (Score:2)
I use notepad++ constantly. Thanks for the tip though. :)
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I highly recommend Notepad++. It's an opensource editor with lots of bells and whistles to handle both your light text requirements and your coding needs. I especially like the plugin that allows me to access remote files via ssh. It automatically detects the type of line break used when you open a file and will continue to use that style as you make changes.
I love Notepad++ for code editing and text editing.
Wish there was a decent macOS equivalent.
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You might want to check out jEdit [jedit.org]. It's open source, platform independent, and has a large number of useful plugins.
Thanks!
Interesting that jedit doesn't appear on any of the "best" N++ Replacements lists I saw; but. . . ?
I'll give it a spin.
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ONLY if you know how to use OpenJDK.
NEVER, EVER, EVER use Oracle's version of Java, because if you do, and your company does not already have a sitewide, seat-based license to use it - with "seat" defined as any employee, contractor, contractor's employee, cook, janitor, or window washer employed directly or indirectly by your company - it does now, and it may cost an almost unlimited amount of money.
And even the allegedly open-source forks of Java, MariaDB, VMWare, etc. are not entirely safe. Remember
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I worked tech support from 91 to 04 for hundreds of users. With Windows 95 I moved from Notepad to Wordpad for quickly printing small jobs, and discovered random format type corruptions. This was an eye opener to just how bad MS software was, I advised others that they weren't crazy when they saw these errors.
Years later my daughter tried to cut text from Internet Exploder to Word, and Word crashed hard. I told her use Chrome and the problem was solved.
Seriously shitty software from MS made me switch to
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Because they are the tools available to me, I use Word and Edge all day. I can also use Chrome if I want to, but that's not much of a choice and I'm on Windows and don't want to be hassled so I might as well use Edge. I find that for what I'm doing with them at least they work about as well as Firefox and LibreOffice Writer on my Linux system at home. So while Microsoft is basically only accomplishing it by ripping off Chrome, at least they finally have a working browser.
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BINGO. This is the only reason I ever opened WordPad.
To avoid this, here's a pipeline script that will convert a Unix text file to Windows (MS-DOS) format:
#!/usr/bin/perl
while () {
chomp;
print "$_\r\n";
}
And to go the other way...
#!/usr/bin/perl
$/="^M";
while () {
chomp;
print;
}
Re:ok i wanna hear from wordpad users if they exis (Score:4, Informative)
There are also the "dos2unix" and "unix2dos" utilities that are included in most linux distributions:
https://waterlan.home.xs4all.n... [xs4all.nl]
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To avoid this, here's a pipeline script that will convert a Unix text file to Windows (MS-DOS) format:
You know what else you can do? Just open the file in Notepad. Notepad has supported the detection of unix line endings for a year now. We even covered it on Slashdot.
Re: ok i wanna hear from wordpad users if they exi (Score:2)
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Yes.
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I actually see Wordpad as a lightweight word processor that's sufficient for simple things that Notepad can't do - like images.
This can be very useful when doing some boilerplate documentation on a system with no extras - something you need to do now and then for custom systems.
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And Notepad likes to do the opposite, it puts line breaks where there are none, completely ruining any paragraphs that you copy from notepad if word-wrap is on. Broken for decades but never fixed, why?
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Broken for decades but never fixed, why?
Citation required. Notepad has gone through an extensive rewrite in the past few years, it even supports unix line endings now. I call bullshit on your random insertion of line endings.
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He said "line breaks" not line endings.
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> Last time I checked, Wordpad would correctly autodetect and display text files with Unix line breaks on Windows, and Notepad wouldn't.
Perhaps you should check more often than once every five years.
https://arstechnica.com/gadget... [arstechnica.com]
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That was fixed a couple of years ago. Notepad in newer versions of Windows 10 and 11 properly detect and handle Unix linebreaks.
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Last time I checked, Wordpad would correctly autodetect and display text files with Unix line breaks on Windows, and Notepad wouldn't.
I wish people who don't use Windows 11 will stop commenting about Windows. You have not checked recently. Notepad introduced the detection, support and switching of Unix line endings last year. Effectively Wordpad was rendered obsolete back then.
Re: ok i wanna hear from wordpad users if they exi (Score:2)
I use Windows 11 every work day.
So far this has not come up at work.
I am not in an IT position at the moment.
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On Windows, Notepad++ should do that as well, and I think there is a portable version that will run from a thumb drive if you're on a system you aren't allowed to modify.
On systems with a real command line you can probably find dos2unix (which works in both directions) and if not then certainly sed.
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Why. are you not just using dos2unix or unix2dos to deal with the line breaks, with said programs being installed via Cygwin on a Windows box? Makes me think you've never heard of Cygwin either.
I have used Cygwin aplenty, and before that MKS Toolkit, and wasn't there some GNU distribution for DOS and Win32 that came with bash and a bunch of other stuff? And I've also used X servers on Windows (both Cygwin's and Chameleon Xoftware, and others I can't recall) and I ran UUPC on DOS and so on and so forth. Don't worry yourself with what you think I don't know about.
But if you read the comment that I wrote, you will see that I explicitly mentioned cases where I am not permitted to install additional so
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that suggests you at least have some kind of minimal knowledge of Unix
Except you don't. There are simply times when you will get given a file with unix line endings in Windows. Throughout all of computing history there have been files of random sourcing which Wordpad displayed correctly and Notepad didn't, and files of specific sourcing (e.g. the pirated software scene).
Fortunately you don't need to do anything you said. Notepad now supports unix file endings.
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I use it constantly, I just haven't tried to open a Unix text file with it so I didn't know it does that now. I did notice that you can control-scroll wheel to zoom in it, which is extremely welcome. I use notepad on the laptop monitor (and sometimes a 3270 emulator) and browser windows and/or word on two other monitors. It's an extremely easy way to operate, and since I'm not managing it few of the deficiencies of Windows are really causing me problems at the moment. If I have a problem I will simply be is
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Notepad++ works just fine with Linux line endings. Does anybody actually use Notepad any more?
Not every system allows you to install 3rd party software. While you're absolutely right about Notepadd++'s awesomeness, there's a definite need for a clean OS level ability to handling unix line endings.
Fortunately Microsoft know this and Notepad itself has introduced unix line ending support last year. Yeah there's plenty of people who still use Notepad.
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I don't think you understand how locked down systems work. Portable or not some systems are locked down so you can't run them, and some systems aren't but are sensitive enough that if your boss catches you using it expect your arse to be thrown on the curb by security.
The OS needs a way to handle text files. Sure the organisation could audit notepadd++ and approve its use, but that is a different discussion.
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Yes-- because the last thing I want to do when trying to open a foreign file on someone's windows machine is go download and install notepad++.
Re:ok i wanna hear from wordpad users if they exis (Score:4, Insightful)
Wordpad allows for nonprofessional home computer users to create documents that are basically as well-formatted as what most nonprofessional home computer users would have been able to do with a supposedly professional wordprocessor like Wordperfect, Office 4.3, Clarisworks, that sort. For a long time it was able to open MS Word documents (*.doc format) and display them well enough to serve as a viewer and method to print in addition to as a light-duty editor.
The removal of Wordpad serves to try to drive any remaining school districts into Microsoft's licensing agreements, because it will force them to find some solution for students to use to type basic term papers. This will probably be an online productivity suite because it would allow the student to use the software from anywhere (ie at-school computer, 1:1 issued laptop, home computer), because a school district wouldn't want to leave students behind whose parents can't afford to buy something.
This is of course discounting the possibility that school districts choose something other than Microsoft's offerings. Since MS Office tends to be the standard among the administrative staff of the district, and may be necessary for teachers as well due to this, they may be gambling that these districts, out of convenience, will just license MS Office for the students too. This would simplify for teachers since they wouldn't need to maintain dual suites (if say, Google's suite was chosen) but it may well just boil down to cost.
As much as I like and personally use software like LibreOffice, it's going to be difficult to get a large organization onboard with an opensource solution if it lacks cloud connectivity. This is also a problem that users of Wordpad now have. When it came out for Microsoft Windows 95 it was incredibly useful in an area when sneakernet was how we transported data. It's less useful now that it requires the average user to perform more steps in order to transport data from place to place, even if it can still be used to create documents with acceptable formatting.
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As much as I like and personally use software like LibreOffice, it's going to be difficult to get a large organization onboard with an opensource solution if it lacks cloud connectivity.
That's what Collabora is for: https://www.collaboraoffice.co... [collaboraoffice.com] Google Docs also supports ODF format.
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You can plug libre office files into google office suite directly. It has full support.
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But I don't see what niche Wordpad fills. I know yall are out there. speak up.
Wordpad is a better version of Notepad specifically because it handles text files from Unix (and now MacOS). Windows uses carriage return (CR) and line feed (LF) but the Unix standard is LF. In terms of features, it is in between Word and Notepad in that has more features like Word Wrap than Notepad but fewer features than Word. I think of it as Word Lite or Notepad XTreme (j/k). For home users, it will be a loss.
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Notepad has word wrap, too.
The thing Wordpad consistently had (through its various versions) that Notepad doesn't is rich text. You could use it as a reasonably credible word processor. This was always a nice feature to have bundled with an operating system. If you just needed to dash off a letter or memo, or even a for sale or yard sale sign, it was perfectly adequate. Microsoft is probably eliminating it in order to a) be able to kill off the team and save money and b) give some infinitesimal boost to Off
Re: ok i wanna hear from wordpad users if they exi (Score:1)
I only use it to look at Unicode files but if notepad does it now I won't miss it. I think I use it like less than a few times a year.
The thing that peeved me most was the removal of show hidden files and folders.
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It fills the niche of basic formatting, essentially. You may not often need to put something in bold or italic, but occassionally you do have to, and WordPad will do that at a click of a button. Notepad can't; it's not what it's there for. It's for absolutely raw text.
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Best way to quickly read RTF files without loading up something overwrought for such a tiny task. I have it on my "Send To" menu for just such a happenstance.
The question I have is why remove it? Is it a security problem? If it doesn't need to be maintained, why remove it?
The only maintenance issue I can imagine is both Notepad and Paint got modern Windows app remakes. They're in the Windows Store now. The Windows app system is by its nature more secure and highly protected. So perhaps they just didn't want
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Let me see, pay Microsoft to rent service giving access to thousands of features you will never need, just so you can read their proprietary format .doc's, that sounds like good value.
Wordpad does 90% of what I need a word processor to do, it's fast, uses no appreciable resources, is elegant in that it only does what you need it to do, and is free - though I'd be happy to pay a modest price for it.
threeatening [sic] to remove MS Paint ... people cried out... at least people use that for the memes, and... maybe for some people it's the quickest possible method of putting an arrow or circle on a screenshot
If you have the skill to use it, it's capable of much more. Here's a tutorial from a well known artist on how
Re: ok i wanna hear from wordpad users if they exi (Score:2)
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I suspect it's superior at doing quick and dirty edits of things without stripping formatting. Notepad struggles with that. And MS Word/Libre Office Writer are bloated to all hell with feature you don't need for quick edits.
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WordPad was amazing compared to NotePad. This is primarily why Microsof keeps the inferior NotePad and ditches the superior WordPad - they'd lose their hard earned reputation for being mediocre slobs if they did something smart.
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Macro-free and virus-free data. PDF was read-only and ODF had no support. The way to collaborate without sharing viruses and macros was RTF. RTF was also unfriendly to (bitmap) images, so it pushed people to clip-art. Once Paint-style software became more popular, images became the norm and clip-art died. Then SVG became the new standard for clip-art and vector-based drawing.
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I have used Wordpad a few times this year. I had to create some quick user training/reference materials, where text formatting is critical to readability. On my personal laptop I could have used Open Office, but it was easier to use the computer already there on-site and configured for the printer.
Considering how many gigs of useless junk are shoved into Windows, there is no excuse for this kind of feature regression and loss of basic functionality.
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I use it all the time. It boots far faster than OpenOffice Writer, and it allows basic formatting, unlike Notepad.
Why MS would choose to break something so useful, I have no idea.
"Buy Word or else..." (Score:4, Informative)
I guess there's HTML...
Re: "Buy Word or else..." (Score:2)
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Or PDF...
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LaTeX
[Ducking and running]
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There's also LibreOffice.
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Never met an office suite which doesn't support RTF.
Never met a person in need of something showing a font who doesn't have an office suite installed.
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ODF. You can use the flat XML version of it for version control systems too. LibreOffice supports it.
It's a shame there is nothing equivalent for spreadsheets with macros.
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RTF originated as a Microsoft format, although the specification was always published, unlike Word's native document formats. It did have a life outside Microsoft, though. NeXT used RTF pretty heavily, and it was inherited by Mac OS X (now known as macOS). TextEdit uses RTF for formatted text documents with embedded images.
just use notepad++ (Score:2, Informative)
just use notepad++
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Yes for Notepad++, it's solid.
And I guess the Microsoft Foundation Class that was basically Wordpad will keep working. Does MFC still exist? I wrote a customized wordpad-like app about 25 years ago, using Borland Delphi (Pascal) and its wrap of MFC. The exe still runs fine in fully updated Windows 11.
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One glitch, shutting down Windows with my old as mud MFC-based app still running causes a dismissable error.
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There [softonic.com] are [libreoffice.org] many [openoffice.org] alternatives [quilljs.com].
It "has" to be removed? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no legitimate reason to remove WordPad other than Microsoft forcig people to buy Office. They could leave it in and let things as they are. But nope. Even though you paid for the product it's not yours and a company will once again reach into your system and take something away, similar to how Amazon removed books from people's Kindle [npr.org] and then Android-based machines [pcmag.com].
Welcome to the digital world where purchasing something doesn't mean you own it. This is why physical books, CDs, and DVDs are still superior. Once you own them, no company can take them away.
Re:It "has" to be removed? (Score:5, Informative)
Libreoffice is overkill, but it can certainly replace Wordpad.
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Libreoffice is overkill, but it can certainly replace Wordpad.
The true cost of reaching to another vendor to act as a replacement for native service, includes the additional risk of the user installing it correctly (to include sourcing an uninfected installer), as well as relying on the end user to maintain it properly.
What may end up being overkill, is the actual cost in the end of managing yet another vendor. Particularly with a service that is commonly targeted for exploitation due to popularity.
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It's a very heavy package for replacing a scribble pad.
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> There is no legitimate reason to remove WordPad
There is. They don't want to maintain it. As much as I hate Microsoft (https://youtu.be/bsFzc0wAtFs?t=255), not maintaining a program that is used even less than Paint, saves money.
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Plus it doesn't really render Word documents all that accurately. Granted, you shouldn't be doing elaborate formatting in a word processor, but still, the whole *point* of the app is being able look at end edit word files, and it doesn't do that well. Also it appears to have problems with Unicode, which these days is a show stopper.
If you're going to have a feature, the feature has to work well enough to be useful. Wordpad barely works at all. With so many free-to-use and open source solutions out there t
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There is no legitimate reason to remove WordPad o.
Other then the fact that probably like 99.9% of users do not actually use it in any way?
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There is no legitimate reason to remove WordPad other than Microsoft forcig people to buy Office.
More likely Microsoft saw that no one uses WordPad since Notepad supported unix line endings and are just removing something well and truly depreciated. Wordpad is not Office. And there's countless ways to author office documents that don't involve buying office.
There's good reason to remove depreciated unused code, if for no other reason than to reduce security risks. Sure it's been a while but Wordpad has been exposed to some significant security issues in the past.
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You didn't pay for Wordpad. You (maybe) pied (sic) for Windows
You just contradicted your own point. Wordpad is part of Windows, or at least it used to be.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
There's plenty of alternatives (Score:2)
Open source that code (Score:4, Interesting)
It's fine and dandy that M$ wants to remove tools from Windows but how about open sourcing the code to those tools for others to learn and build from. Removing Wordpad is an obvious step toward getting more people to use a paid subscription to something else. Wordpad is still useful for viewing the occasional *Nix text file formatted with line feeds only or creating quick nicely formatted documents to print out, as no one (I know at least) shares .RTF formatted files.
Deprecate Windows (Score:3)
Just upgrade to Ubuntu Whacky Weiner or whatever the latest version is.
LibreOffice (Score:2)
Why remove it? (Score:2)
Microsoft could have just moved access to it to the ribbon. No one would ever have found it after that.
In Related News (Score:2)
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Not only you. When one day, 28 years ago, Windows 95 came out without MS Write, but with Wordpad instead, many heavy Write users were dismayed to find that Wordpad was clearly inferior to Write in many aspects. Now it's time of revenge, I guess.
Paintbrush vs Paint is another story.
Notepad doesn't work well with LARGE text files. (Score:3)
Re:Notepad doesn't work well with LARGE text files (Score:4, Informative)
They should maybe do the other way around (Score:3)
Keep WordPad and ditch Windows.
Word pad is poor manâ(TM)s word (Score:2)
A Pity (Score:2)
It is a pity that they are doing this but why? It certainly isn't because Microsoft is trying to slim down the side of a basic Windows install. If they were truly interested in doing that they'd get rid of all that additional crapware very few want that is automatically installed. Hah! They could make it easy for users to get rid of Edge and all those pesky programs that continually remind you of its existence and repeatedly encourage you to use it instead of Chrome, so that Microsoft can spy on your br
RichText control? (Score:2)
Pet Peeve (Score:2)
I'm going to say it: "Sign up for free" is not to be compared to downloading some freeware program (like Abiword, Notepad++ etc.) without questions asked and your online movements being tracked ad infinitum. That is not "free" (as in freedom).
I used to use the default installed 365 on my new mobile (I have spreadsheets to record business trips and do a souped-up shopping lists, go figure). Then the "register to continue to use" notifications popp
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