Microsoft Corp. plans to phase out WordPad, the free word processor that has shipped with Windows for the past 28 years.

The company disclosed the move in a support note released on Friday. “WordPad is no longer being updated and will be removed in a future release of Windows,” Microsoft stated in the brief announcement. “We recommend Microsoft Word for rich text documents like .doc and .rtf and Windows Notepad for plain text documents like .txt.”

WordPad made its original debut as part of Windows 95, the version of Windows that rolled out to consumers in August 1995. The operating system required a 40-megahertz processor, 4 megabytes of memory and a 50-megabyte hard drive to run. It was the first version of Windows to offer a Start button and internet access.

WordPad is more sophisticated than Notepad, the other free text editing application built into Windows, but offers considerably fewer features than Word. It provides basic text formatting options, such as bold and italic, as well as the ability to create lists. At the same time, WordPad lacks other essential tools such as a spellcheck.

The application offers a handful of time-saving features to streamline common document editing tasks. One such feature, which is accessible from WordPad’s ribbon bar, allows users to paste the current date and time into a file with three clicks. 

For about 20 years, Microsoft offered a fourth text editing application alongside Notepad, WordPad and Word. The application shipped as a part of a productivity suite called Microsoft Works that also included a spreadsheet editor and other tools. Until its discontinuation in 2009, the suite was positioned as a lower-cost alternative to Office, with a starting price of $2 per license.

It appears that Microsoft plans to substitute WordPad partly with Notepad, the simpler text editing application included in Windows. Notepad was released in 1983, a full 12 years before WordPad. The initial version of the tool launched not for Windows but rather MS-DOS, Microsoft’s first operating system.

After several years without an update, Microsoft released a new iteration of Notepad in 2018 that added a text zoom option and the ability to track line numbers. This year, the pace of enhancements has picked up. Microsoft added support for tabs in January and, last month, previewed an upcoming Notepad release that will include an autosave feature.

WordPad is one of several Windows features that Microsoft has discontinued this year. Previously, the company in August announced plans to phase out the operating system’s built-in Cortana assistant. The move comes as Microsoft works to integrate more advanced chatbot features powered by artificial intelligence into many of its products. 

Image: Microsoft