WordPad is a

word processor A word processor (WP) is a device or computer program that provides for input, editing, formatting, and output of text, often with some additional features. Early word processors were stand-alone devices dedicated to the function, but current word ...

software designed by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

that was included in versions of

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

from

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft and the first of its Windows 9x family of operating systems, released to manufacturing on July 14, 1995, and generally to retail on August 24, 1995. Windows 95 merged ...

through Windows 11, version 23H2. Similarly to its predecessor Microsoft Write, it served as a basic word processor, positioned as more advanced than the

Notepad A notebook (also known as a notepad, writing pad, drawing pad, or legal pad) is a book or stack of paper pages that are often Ruled paper, ruled and used for purposes such as note-taking, Diary, journaling or other writing, drawing, or scrapbooki ...

text editor A text editor is a type of computer program that edits plain text. An example of such program is "notepad" software (e.g. Windows Notepad). Text editors are provided with operating systems and software development packages, and can be used to c ...

by supporting rich text editing, but with a subset of the functionality of

Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is a word processor program, word processing program developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platf ...

. Microsoft removed WordPad in Windows 11 24H2 and it has no successor. Earlier versions primarily supported a subset of the

Rich Text Format ) As an example, the following RTF code would be rendered as follows: This is some bold text. Character encoding A standard RTF file can only consist of 7-bit ASCII characters, but can use escape sequences to encode other characters. ...

(RTF, .rtf) and Microsoft Word 6.0 formats, although later versions are also capable of saving

Office Open XML Office Open XML (also informally known as OOXML) is a zipped, XML-based file format developed by Microsoft for representing spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents. Ecma International standardized the initial version ...

(OOXML, .docx) and OpenDocument Text (.odt) files.

Features

WordPad can format and print text, including font and bold, italic, colored, and centered text, and lacks functions such as a

spell checker In software, a spell checker (or spelling checker or spell check) is a software feature that checks for misspellings in a text. Spell-checking features are often embedded in software or services, such as a word processor, email client, electronic ...

thesaurus A thesaurus (: thesauri or thesauruses), sometimes called a synonym dictionary or dictionary of synonyms, is a reference work which arranges words by their meanings (or in simpler terms, a book where one can find different words with similar me ...

, and control of

pagination Pagination, also known as paging, is the process of dividing a document into discrete page (paper), pages, either electronic pages or printed pages. In reference to books produced without a computer, pagination can mean the consecutive page num ...

. It does not support footnotes and endnotes. WordPad can read, render, and save many

(RTF) features that it cannot create, such as tables, strikeout,

superscript A subscript or superscript is a character (such as a number or letter) that is set slightly below or above the normal line of type, respectively. It is usually smaller than the rest of the text. Subscripts appear at or below the baseline, wh ...

, subscript, "extra" colors, text background colors, numbered lists, right and left indentation, quasi-

hypertext Hypertext is E-text, text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typic ...

and URL linking, and line-spacing greater than 1. It is simpler and faster than a richly-featured word processor, with low system resource use. Pasting into WordPad from an HTML document, such as a Web page or email, typically automatically converts most or all of it to RTF, depending partly on the Web browser from which the text is copied. WordPad is suited to taking notes; writing letters and stories; and use on various tablets, PCs, and smart phones. It is unsuitable for work that relies heavily on graphics and typesetting, such as most publishing-industry requirements for rendering final hard copy. A character not on the keyboard can be entered into WordPad by typing its hexadecimal

code point A code point, codepoint or code position is a particular position in a Table (database), table, where the position has been assigned a meaning. The table may be one dimensional (a column), two dimensional (like cells in a spreadsheet), three dime ...

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

followed by . Likewise, the code point of a character from another application can be determined by

copying Copying is the duplication of information or an wiktionary:artifact, artifact based on an instance of that information or artifact, and not using the process that originally generated it. With Analog device, analog forms of information, copying is ...

it into WordPad followed by . WordPad does not support all the features defined in the RTF/Word 2007 specification. Earlier versions of WordPad also supported the "Word for Windows 6.0" format, which is forward compatible with the Microsoft Word format. In Windows 95, 98, and 2000, WordPad uses Microsoft's RichEdit control, versions 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0, respectively. In Windows XP SP1 and later, and Windows 7, it uses RichEdit 4.1. A similar word processor, also called WordPad and with simple functionality, is supplied by some vendors on a

Windows CE Windows CE, later known as Windows Embedded CE and Windows Embedded Compact, is a discontinued operating system developed by Microsoft for mobile and embedded devices. It was part of the Windows Embedded family and served as the software foun ...

pre-installation. Its

icon An icon () is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, in the cultures of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Catholic Church, Catholic, and Lutheranism, Lutheran churches. The most common subjects include Jesus, Mary, mother of ...

resembles an early

icon.

History

WordPad was introduced in Windows 95, replacing Microsoft Write, included with all previous versions of Windows (version 3.11 and earlier). The source code to WordPad was also distributed by Microsoft as a

Microsoft Foundation Class Library Microsoft Foundation Class Library (MFC) is a C++ object-oriented library for developing desktop applications for Windows. MFC was introduced by Microsoft in 1992 and quickly gained widespread use. While Microsoft has introduced alternative a ...

sample application with MFC 3.2 and later, shortly before the release of Windows 95. It is still available for download from the

MSDN Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) was the division of Microsoft responsible for managing the firm's relationship with developers and testers, such as hardware developers interested in the operating system (OS), and software developers developing ...

website. The default font used in Windows 95 to Windows Vista was 10 pt Arial; in Windows 7 it was changed to 11pt Calibri. WordPad for

Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft, targeting the server and business markets. It is the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RT ...

/ XP added full Unicode support, enabling WordPad to support multiple languages, but big endian UTF-16/UCS-2 is not supported. It can open

(versions 6.0–2003) files, although it opens newer versions of the .doc format with incorrect formatting. Also, unlike previous WordPad versions, it cannot save files in the .doc format (only .txt and .rtf). Files saved as Unicode text are encoded as UTF-16 LE. As a security measure Windows XP Service Pack 2 and later versions of Windows and its service packs reduced support for opening .WRI.

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. The successor to Windows 8.1, it was Software release cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on July 2 ...

and later versions support voice typing. Windows XP Tablet PC Edition SP2 and

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...

include

speech recognition Speech recognition is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers. It is also ...

, allowing dictation into WordPad. These and later Windows versions implement the RichEdit control, allowing WordPad to support extensible third-party services built using the ''

Text Services Framework The Text Services Framework (TSF) is a COM framework and API in the Microsoft Windows operating system that supports advanced text input and text processing. It was introduced in Windows XP. The Language Bar is the core user interface for Text S ...

'' (TSF), such as grammar and spellcheck. In Windows Vista support for reading Microsoft Word DOC files was removed because of the incorrect rendering and formatting problems, and because a Microsoft security bulletin reported a security vulnerability in opening Word files in WordPad. For viewing older (Word 97–2003), and

, documents, Microsoft recommends free-of-charge

Microsoft Word Viewer Microsoft Word Viewer is a discontinued freeware program for Microsoft Windows that can display and print Microsoft Word documents. Word Viewer allows text from a Word document to be copied into clipboard and pasted into a word processor. The l ...

. Native Office Open XML and ODF 1.1 support was implemented in the

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...

version of WordPad. In Windows 7 the program's user interface was updated to use a

ribbon A ribbon or riband is a thin band of material, typically cloth but also plastic or sometimes metal, used primarily as decorative binding and tying. Cloth ribbons are made of natural materials such as silk, cotton, and jute and of synthetic mate ...

, similar to those in

Microsoft Office Microsoft Office, MS Office, or simply Office, is an office suite and family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. The first version of the Office suite, announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at CO ...

. In January 2020, a Windows Insider build of

tested an advertisement steering WordPad users to Office web apps.

Discontinuation

In September 2023, Microsoft announced that WordPad will be removed from "a future release of Windows", recommending

Windows Notepad Windows Notepad is a simple text editor for Microsoft Windows, Windows; it creates and edits plain text documents. It was first released in 1983 to commercialize the computer mouse in MS-DOS. History In May 1983, at the COMDEX computer expo in ...

and Microsoft Word. In January 2024, WordPad was no longer auto-installed after a clean installation of the OS with the release of the

Windows 11 Windows 11 is a version of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system, released on October 5, 2021, as the successor to Windows 10 (2015). It is available as a free upgrade for devices running Windows 10 that meet the #System requirements, Windo ...

Build 26020 Insider Preview's Canary Channel. Furthermore, Microsoft stated that WordPad will be officially removed in future updates, and it will not be available for reinstallation. Microsoft recommended using Microsoft Word for rich text documents like .doc and .rtf, while Notepad is suggested for plain text documents like .txt.

References

{{Authority control 1995 software Windows components Windows word processors Discontinued Windows components Discontinued Microsoft software

Features

History

Discontinuation

See also

References