Another one bites the dust: Microsoft buries WordPad, but there is an afterlife

Back in 1985, Microsoft was releasing Windows 1.0. This primitive version of its flagship product came with a basic word processor, known as Microsoft Write. One decade later, Windows 95 arrived and, with it, came the first WordPad version, which replaced Write. First only supporting RTF and DOC files, WordPad can now save ODT and OOXML/DOCX files as well. Sadly, Windows 11 24H2 will kill this app, and there's no replacement for it. Unsurprisingly, Microsoft advises its users to switch to Notepad (free) or Word (commercial software).

The silver lining of this dark-clouded story is that WordPad users who want to keep using it after updating to Windows 11 24H2 can do so by simply saving Wordpad.exe, wordpadfilter.dll, and write.exe. The first two are located in the C:\Program Files\Windows NT\Accessories folder, while the last can be found in C:\Windows. For now, some websites (this one, for example) are providing setup packages for the discontinued app, but Microsoft might forbid them to do this in the future. When downloading these packages from third parties, you must be very careful to scan them for viruses before anything else.

Since WordPad is just a nearly basic word processor/text editing tool, there are plenty of free choices lying around, from very basic text editors such as FocusWriter to the advanced word processors included in the free office suites such as OpenOffice or LibreOffice.

Those who are looking for a WordPad guide can grab Microsoft WordPad Basic Computer Book by the Digital Dishari Computer Institute off Amazon, as Kindle Unlimited subscribers can get it for free and the acquisition price is $3 otherwise.