• Microsoft is stopping updates to WordPad and will remove it from a future version of Windows.
• WordPad has not received the same level of attention as Notepad.
• Microsoft will completely remove WordPad in a future version of Windows, most likely Windows 12.

Microsoft has stopped updating WordPad and plans to remove the word-processing application from a future version of Windows.

Instead, Microsoft will promote the use of Microsoft Word, its paid word processing software known for its comprehensive feature set, in contrast to the basic WordPad application that has been included in Windows since the Windows 95 era.

Here’s what Microsoft stated on Friday:

“WordPad is no longer being updated and will be removed in a future release of Windows. We recommend Microsoft Word for rich text documents like.doc and.rtf and Windows Notepad for plain text documents like.txt.”

The news about WordPad’s discontinuation came just a day after Microsoft unveiled improvements to Notepad, which now includes features like autosave and automatic tab restoration. In 2018, Microsoft gave its Windows Notepad app a significant update, the first in many years, and later introduced tab functionality in Windows 11.