Originally published at: Microsoft to take workhorse app WordPad out back after 28 years - Boing Boing
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Translation: whether you think it has value or not is irrelevant. We will determine what you can run on our “your” computer.
It’s for your own good. You’ll thank us in the end.
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This sounds like they’re removing something that’s a barrier to getting people to pony up for an office subscription.
To which , I can only add:
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There are plenty of free lightweight WordPad workalikes out there, and I’m sure there will be more after this move.
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and MS365 is a nightmare; had to install it “once” (twice, third and fourth) for a friend, who needed it for some ordered training from the employment office; never again!
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Wordpad was always a weird little piece of software that was just sort of there. The disk space it will free up will be more useful.
And how much disk space was that, exactly?
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Just when Rich Text is becoming cool, too!
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¯_(ツ)_/¯ Sometimes it’s the right tool for the job. You’ll never hear me say that about MS Word!
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~3 MBytes, according to my copy of Win10 enterprise, and ignoring all the various copies and patches in the SxS folder.
It’s still a 32 bit program, too. (not like it ever needed to be 64 bit, but…)
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Notepad++ has been around for a long time and is such a wonderful editor that I forget that Wordpad exists.
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@nixiebunny thanks for this! MS just keeps making their products less user friendly and more intrusive. I just installed Notepad++ and will begin using it forthwith.
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Yeah, wordpad has always sucked though. I use note pad still for notes, and notepad++ at work. Word Pad I almost never used. Either used Word back when getting a “copy” of office wasn’t hard, or now I use Open Office as well (or google docs)
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Windows as a service malware.
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I still use wordpad. If I need to screenshot a bunch of images on an old WIN98 system and paste into something so I can move it to my WIN10 system, the Wordpad just works. But I can probably live without it.
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They had to get rid of it because it didn’t treat text files as executables.
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wordpad i think uses rtf, so in theory you should be able to use most anything ( word, open office, notepad++,… ) on your new system to open any wordpad files you create on your old system…
( or, my plan: never upgrade to win11 
)
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You can download Wordpad and save it on an SD Card/Memory Card then you will be able to reinstall it in any future Windows OS.
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RTF support is why I still use Wordpad as my primary place to type things; it’s the simplest format I could find that can accept both text & graphics. I take screen snips dozens of times a day (protip: get Greenshot), paste into Wordpad, then bash out some thoughts related to the snip.
Wordpad’s lack features is a plus to me; like no spell check. I find the red squiggle underline distracting. When I’m writing, I don’t bother with spelling errors. Just type my thoughts.
Matter of fact, this post was written in Wordpad, then pasted into the BB editor, which then showed me all my typing mistakes; I correct them, then copy/paste the corrected version back into Wordpad.
I really like Notepad++ for the little bits of coding I do. Maybe RTF support will be added, or is already available but I just can’t find it.
Otherwise, I suppose I’ll just save a copy of wrdpad.exe out of MS’s reach.
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i think i was wrong about notepad++. you can open it there, and hand edit the markup – but to see images a person would need a plugin to preview it. ( in which case – just to see the content – opening it with google docs or something like “docs online viewer” in chrome is probably easier. )
apparently ms has talked about adding rtf support to regular notepad; but that hasn’t happened yet.
i really like onenote for mixing images and text; but only the old, non-cloud version. and it’s been a pain to keep it from being updated to the newer versions.
you might need a copy of all of its dlls too. assuming that some of them aren’t core system ones. i honestly almost wonder if there’s some ancient win32 api that they’re trying to get rid of, and wordpad is merely the byproduct of the api’s removal.
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