Those of you who still use WordPad on Windows will at some point have to find another program to open and read your favorite documents. In the latest edition of its list of deprecated Windows features, Microsoft announced that WordPad is no longer being updated and will be removed in a future Windows update.
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Microsoft hasn’t revealed when WordPad will be retired, so we don’t know how much life the app has left. Microsoft also didn’t explain why WordPad is going away. But the company advises people to turn to Microsoft Word to view large text documents such as .DOC and .RTF files and to Notepad to read simple TXT files.
WordPad was introduced with Windows 95 in 1995 as a more capable alternative to the barebones Notepad app. Included in every version of Windows since then, the program has received certain improvements over the years, including support for Microsoft Word documents and the Ribbon interface.
Although WordPad can read basic Word documents, it cannot handle more advanced formatting, layouts, and content. As such, its usefulness to Microsoft Word users is often limited.
Additionally, WordPad lacks some features found in most real word processors, including a spell checker, table and column tools, page numbers, headers and footers, and support for charts and graphs.
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Given its limitations, why has WordPad survived so long? Well, it is better than Notepad and it is freely accessible on Windows. But over time, other more effective options emerged.
If you need to view a Word document, there are various third-party file viewers and readers available. If you want to create and edit a document in Word and free Word flavor, you can always turn to the free online edition as well as Google Docs.
