RIP Microsoft WordPad. You Will Be Missed

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 293 points – RIP Microsoft WordPad. You Will Be Missed
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RIP Microsoft WordPad. You Will Be Missed::It's truly the end of an era as we say farewell to a real one.

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WordPad is what MS Word should be. It's most of what everyone needs in a word processor and it's lightweight. MS Word is becoming a bloated nightmare of toolbars and creeping featuritis.

Is becoming? It already has been for decades. I think the extent of adding an entire VBA automation backend was somewhere near the tipping point...

Fortunately LibreOffice is a thing for anyone who wants a $0 rich text capable editor, and I'm sure there are a zillion other alternatives by now both open source and not.

Yeah, "becoming" is a strange choice of wording.... Word has been bloated and overkill for 2 decades at this point.

Libre Office is still bulky for anything I want on my PC. If I'm going to do any serious writing, I'm using Google Docs for backups and such. If I'm doing quick txt edits I'm using Sublime or Notepad. I use wordpad for stuff in the middle so I will definitely miss it and not sure how to solve this problem.

That said, I'm not fucking installing Win 11 so guess this isn't a problem till 12.

I must admit, I really enjoyed fucking around in M$ Office 2003 (PowerPoint, FrontPage and more) as a kid — we made our own fictional "OS" Desktop Environments in PowerPoint, copying text boxes, drop-down menus etc. from FrontPage. It had a lot of new features that Office XP didn't have, which made our projects much cooler. It was like the best of both worlds, since it had a somewhat classic UI but also added features we found interesting for our weird niche usecase. Since Office 2003, it's only been getting worse, IMO.

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I like LibreOffice, I used it it university, and before Libre I used openoffice and staroffice before that.

BUT! Since working in an ms office reliant organization for more than 10 years, I've become addicted to ms office's grammar checks and integration with onedrive/sharepoint. Version control is integrated, I don't have to alt tab to a terminal to submit to svn/git, and we have comments and live collaboration.

I sometimes wish that I could have working grammar check in other software than microsoft's. Writing my final thesis in word, only to copy the sections into texniccenter for layout was tedious.

OnlyOffice if you want an editor similar to Word. I switched to it also because LibreOffice's UI bugged out and I didn't see any buttons.

Thanks! I'm trying it out and see if it meets my meager needs for home use office type software. It seems lighter weight than LibreOffice.

I like to think that LibreOffice is a great alternative to those used to 2003 and older MS Office, and OnlyOffice is a good alternative to those used to post-2003 MS Office.

VBA automation backend

That was in the first Word for Windows for 1989. The scripting built into word was later rebranded as VBA. I used it in 1990 to replicate the "Give me a Cookie" prank that was on Vax/VMS at the time.

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I feel like anytime I've ever taken a class to learn how to use Word, it's been one of two things.

First is essentially how we will use Word. It's a note pad with a few extra things for editing text, but the main thing is headers, footers, and the margin sizes.

Second is nothing I will ever use. When I was going to school for accounting I had to take a class on Windows programs, and we spent so much time learning how to post images, how to edit them, and shit like that. By the end of the class I could probably make a profesional looking flyer, but it would have taken half the time with any image editing type program.

Also in that class we had a free students version of Word, which meant that there were usually steps in the homework we couldn't do, but we still got points docked for it. Even though we all told the professor about this. So that was fun.

AbiWord was always a good one. Their format was weird but it wasn't limited to that.

Old word processors were designed to make sure to include features both the consumer and the professional (who would need things like markup tools, special margin widths, etc.) would need. Then professional printers moved on to better software, but Microsoft (and others) never removed those features and that turned into 'how many features can we add' until now Word is like some sort of shitty combination of a WordPad and PowerPoint. It's so full of unnecessary features that have a one case in ten thousand uses.

It's not even just the word processors themselves. This has been going on for decades. Why are dingbats fonts packaged with computers? Because they were printers marks and Apple wanted printers to use their computers, so they added a font with printers marks and then Microsoft did the same with Windows and now we still have a font which is used mostly by kids fucking around because there are now better and easier ways to use the one or two characters in that font set that you will ever likely even think about using.

The more OSes and software trim themselves of this fat, the better, but it goes the other direction most of the time.

I think Word js really more like a combination of Wordpad and Publisher.

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I couldn't care less. I never used it. Was either notepad++ or office. I'm pretty sure with all the telemetry they have, they knew no one really use it anymore and it's not worth it.

I'm amazed I had to scroll this far too find any mention of notepad++

I mean Notepad++ is like a monument to Microsoft incompetence and them not caring about technically minded people for decades. Where a single guy beats trillion dollar company's ass, actually not just beats, absolutely destroys big time. And they were either not able or didn't care with responding and providing some power text editor. The fact that their OS was able to acquire any significant market share in developer's community is an ultimate triumph of marketing department

Will it?!

I thought WordPad was the best thing ever in 2001.

Then I got Microsoft Word. Then Google Docs changed everything by making it free and haven't even thought of WordPad since.

I dunno something something LibreOffice before the Linux nerds beat me up.

Not a Linux nerd, LibreOffice is what we use on our five windows computers because it's free 🤷

Wordpad was good for notes with wrapped text. However then I discovered Notepad++ and that's the far better note taking application - you can even get plugins like a comparitor that compares two different files, as well as being an excellent application for typing and viewing code.

The only times I've ever opened wordpad was on new Windows installs when I hadn't installed another word processor or hadn't changed the default editor for RTF files.

Dumb question but does it spy on you like everything else?

Not a dumb question! I wouldn't be surprised if it does though I can't say for sure it does. With how little development it's gotten recently, I want to say no it doesn't spy nearly as much because it likely hasn't been updated with more spying, though. But I obviously don't know for sure, they might have went in and added telemetry while changing little else UX or functionality wise.

LibreOffice has its flaws but it's functionally superior to Wordpad and (IMO, and this is probably an unpopular opinion) not far behind Microsoft Office, almost on par. It's also open source and still gets regular updates. So if you're looking for a privacy friendly alternative to Microsoft Office I'd suggest that and not risk it with Wordpad.

Though, the Windows OS itself's spying definitely swamps whatever spying Wordpad does or doesn't have, so the point is kind of moot, you're being spied on about the same with or without Wordpad, same applies to LibreOffice as it can't do anything about Windows's spying. I encourage everyone to at least try Linux as a dual boot or on a second computer if you already have one of those, even if you can't fully migrate away from Windows for whatever reason.

Will it? Notepad++ all the way man.

Regular notepad is starting to get a LOT more features. I could see notepad essentially filling that void if they keep up the pace.

I absolutely love the multiple tabs and automatically preserving unsafe stuff.

At the same time, if I open notepad I've got like 400 pages of unsafe craft sitting around. Still worth it though.

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RIP WordPad.

I almost never used it (in fact, I only heard of it when its death was announced, striesand effect in action), but this is sad. It's a bygone relic of when software was included with what you paid for, simple and efficient, and not marred by endless storage hungry updates that rarely add anything useful.

There is no easy replacement.

Of course, Microsoft wants you to use Word, which is expensive and runs at 0.05x the speed of WordPad.

There's notepad, but it's far too basic.

Notepad++ exists and is really good (I donated to it recently), but it targets a different kind of text editing, focused more on code than documents.

LibreOffice is good for document editing, but it's somewhat slow and clunky in a way WordPad is definitely not.

The closest competitor may be Abiword but that already died years ago.

I bounced around between LibreOffice and OpenOffice for years as I was too cheap to pay for Word. Mainly Libre.

Finally broke down and paid for Office365 when I was struggling to display some (I believe) docx files at the same time my wife was requesting we get it for her work (and this doesn't even get into struggling to get stuff to display properly for word uses which was constantly a problem).

And man, is it lightyears better than libreoffice. And sure it's slower, it does a ton more stuff, but if it feels slow to you. . .what kind of computer are you running? I use it on my 8 year old laptop all the time and have never really thought it felt slow.

Wordpad I didn't even realize still existed. Just looking at it now, I see why. I see very little I gain from NP++ (or I've even switched over to VSCode for a lot of things).

I feel like you are making the case for why the only "easy" replacement costs money. The free versions are all extremely limited, or aren't very good.

I'll admit I exaggerated slightly (I just opened both today). I have a gaming laptop with a Ryzen 9 5900HX, and opened up both apps from battery power.

WordPad took about 1.5s to open, which is longer than usual.

Word took about 6s to open, which is normal even if I'm plugged in.

LibreOffice would actually take more like 15s to open under these circumstances, which is why I said it's slow. The clunky part is due to the UX.

Even notepad took over a second to open as well.

I guess I expect more when I have a near top of the line CPU and it pains me to think that it's even slower for the vast majority of people.

I guess I'm just not too concerned with start up times, having come from the age of HDD. 6 seconds to start, as long as it's not lagging while I'm using it, is almost unnoticeable.

Yeah that makes sense. I also have a high end SSD so that might also be inflating my expectations.

LibreOffice is lots faster than Word, honestly you can say that about any peice of Microsoft software and its open source equivilant. LibreOffice also displays old document formats better too.

Never used wordpad, honestly surprised to see how many people used it. Maybe someone will start a project to make a simple word processor to replace it.

From my experience Word runs faster and more smoothly than LibreOffice Writer.

Everyone says Word is bloated, but gosh they're picking the wrong Microsoft software to pick on. Pick on Teams instead. Word is clunky at times and slow but feature rich. Teams is horribly slow and laggy even on fast hardware.

Is it being replaced with something else preinstalled? What the heck do I tell Windows-using coworkers to use when it doesn't open a text documents automatically from clients??

I've installed Libreoffice but Linux has spoilt me as Windows needs a damn reboot to use it properly. I can't log back in (and one of the setups is also a damn server to the other) :/

I mean, Notepad is still there, and even with its simplicity and other issues (which have gotten a lot better), it's always been way better for text files than WordPad

Notepad could be fine sometimes but they often have images in the documents given from our clients (who are often equally not skilled with computers).

I am sure Microsoft will just keep nagging them to take an Office 365 subscription.

I've installed Libreoffice but Linux has spoilt me as Windows needs a damn reboot to use it properly.

You're either exaggerating or it's a problem with LibreOffice.

The provider of the PCs is a company we get stock from so maybe normally it would just install without reboot but there are admin settings which make it difficult to install unexpected software.

I suggested LibreOffice to my manager for their Apple laptop and they say it randomly disappears. They got it via download on the website so I suspect Apple is doing something fucky to make you pay for it from the store.

I guess I have to switch back to Netscape composer.

Can you add some falling glitter to the mouse while you're there?

The main reason why I used WordPad was because 'write' is shorter than both 'notepad' and 'msword' in the run menu.

Whenever I need notepad, I just write ‘text’ (for text editor), and it shows up.

Does msword work? Always used winword

oh yeah winword was the right one (my last Windows computer only has LibreOffice so it's been a hot minute) :P

Been using Kate editor (yes, it's on Windows as well) if I ever decide to boot into Windows 🤢

The KDE for windows software as a whole is pretty good.

I use KDEConnect to combine phone and windows. It although makes changing between OS a lot more fluid.

I'm going to keep it as long as I can. It's not often that I use it, but it can't be beat for quick one-off things where I need font formatting (Notepad can't) like address labels or recipes. I use Libre Office for its spreadsheet, haven't really tried the word processor, but I totally do not need a full fledged word processor for that stuff.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

In the Windows 11 Build 26020 Insider Preview’s Canary Channel, Microsoft announced that WordPad will not be auto-installed after installing the new OS build and will officially be removed in the future update.

WordPad was initially positioned in two ways: 1) a text editor that has some functionalities of MS Word and 2) a more advanced version of the Notepad text editor, which was released some 40 years ago in 1983.

According to a Microsoft Learn post on all the Deprecated features for Windows clients, the company says, “We recommend Microsoft Word for rich text documents like .doc and .rtf and Windows Notepad for plain text documents like .txt.” This somewhat hints at the fact that Microsoft, too, realized that WordPad is just a weird middle ground between MS Word and Notepad and can be done away with.

This is mainly conjecture, though, and there’s a possibility the company had other, more solid reasons for removing the text editor.

GeekWire also points out that they recently noticed that WordPad didn’t get a dark mode update and that it should have been enough to give them an idea of its upcoming demise.

Even though I have probably used WordPad a total of three and a half times in my life, and that too, when I had my reasons for not using MS Word or Google Docs, I can imagine others, like some of my colleagues feeling a bit more nostalgic for the word-processing app when it’s gone.

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