Microsoft has discontinued WordPad, the old text editor first introduced in Windows 95, in September 2023. Later, the release notes for one of the preview builds of Windows 11 confirmed that the company plans to completely delete WordPad from the functional of the system.
Now, we have more information about deprecating the old WYSIWYG text editor.
In a document which published on the official Microsoft Learn website, the company says that WordPad will be completely removed from Windows 11 24H2 and Windows Server 2025. Both operating systems will be released without the familiar data of WordPad, namely wordpad.exe, write.exe and wordpadfilter.dll. Microsoft recommends that developers avoid referencing these files in their applications and use the Microsoft Word and Notepad.
Although WordPad had quite a few features, and was a decent rich text editor with RTF support, with Windows 11 version 24H2, (also known as Windows 11 2024 Update) the operating system will no longer have a built-in text editor with RTF support . If you often work with this file format, Microsoft recommends using Word. As for regular text (TXT) files, Microsoft says that Notepad will suffice, especially after the latest and upcoming updates.
It should be noted that there won't be any official way to restore WordPad in Windows 11, so those who absolutely want the app will have to use a hack that we suspect will be released soon. Windows is famous for its backwards compatibility, so restoring WordPad shouldn't be much of a problem.
