Microsoft is dropping WordPad from Windows 10 and Windows 11

Having just delivered an impressive update to the much-loved text editor Notepad, Microsoft has revealed that its (slightly) more advanced sibling, WordPad, is to be discontinued.

Serving as a halfway house between the barebones Notepad and a fully-fledged word processor, WordPad has been a feature of Windows for decades -- having been preceded by Write . But now Microsoft feels that the time has come to pull the plug, saying that the app is now longer being developed and will be killed ff.

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The precise timing for ditching WordPad has not been revealed, but Microsoft says that the app is no longer being updated. The company suggests that those with basic needs should stick with Notepad, while anyone looking for more advanced features should use Microsoft Word.

In a notice posted to its support pages, Microsoft says:

WordPad is no longer being updated and will be removed in a future release of Windows.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.

While Microsoft's previous plans to remove Paint from Windows led to such complaints from fans that the company was forced to backtrack, this seems unlikely with WordPad. Although the bargain basement word processor is an important part of Windows' history, its fanbase is smaller and far less avid (or rabid) than Paint's.