Microsoft has decided to discontinue its popular WordPad app after a legendary span of 28 years. The Redmond giant will no longer ship WordPad with Windows, starting with the Build 26020 of the operating system.
Here is everything you need to know about this change, including the alternatives you can try for WordPad for Windows.
Microsoft Wordpad Discontinued, Will No Longer Ship With Windows
The company has announced WordPad as a deprecated feature, meaning it will discontinue it, and the software will no longer receive any development or updates. Moreover, the text editor will not ship with future Windows 11 releases.
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Microsoft has also posted a statement: “Starting with this build, the WordPad and People apps will no longer be installed after doing a clean install of the OS. In a future flight, WordPad will be removed in an upgrade. WordPad will not be reinstallable. WordPad is a deprecated Windows feature.”
The beloved app made its debut in 1995 with Windows 95 as a simple text editor for editing rich text documents. Consequently, over the years, Microsoft introduced an alternative editor called Word, an app that requires an active Microsoft Office subscription, and the company is now discontinuing WordPad in favour of it
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However, WordPad has been coexisting over the years with its sibling NotePad and Word, but the company is now discontinuing it. Microsoft will also remove Cortana with the Windows 11 Insider Preview build 26020 and replace it with its Co-Pilot AI assistant.
Microsoft Has Previously Discontinued Apps Like Paint
The company has previously discontinued apps like Microsoft Paint with the Windows 10 Fall Creator update, but after protests from users, the company decided to make Paint an installable app on the Microsoft Store.
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WordPad always provided a middle ground between NotePad and Microsoft Word to free users. WordPad offered most features of Word while still being more advanced than NotePad, and, unfortunately, Microsoft is discontinuing it.
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