Microsoft Is Retiring WordPad After Nearly 30 Years

Bradley Rhodes -

Microsoft has decided to discontinue its support for WordPad and will remove it from Windows after nearly three decades of use. WordPad, which has been a part of the Windows operating system since Windows 95, allowed users to create and edit formatted documents and often served as a free, built-in alternative to Microsoft Word.

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Microsoft recommends using Microsoft Word instead of WordPad for working with formatted documents and Windows Notepad for simple text files. Microsoft confirmed that "WordPad is no longer being updated and will be removed in a future release of Windows."

Notably, this isn't the first time Microsoft has considered discontinuing a classic application. Earlier this year, the company also disabled Cortana, its voice-assistant software.