Why is WordPad Being Removed from Windows 10/11?

Wordpad is faster to open than Microsoft word!

Wordpad does not spy on you!

Notepad has not been updated in 30 years!

Wordpad is a better Notepad

there is no reason to remove it other than greed, there was no reason to "update" it

are you going to start removing features disk fragment because not many people use it?

Hur dur why haven't you updated the Windows Phone dialer which hasn't been updated or used since 1995 dialer.exe

Wordpad was something i used all the time!

I am dismayed that Wordpad is being removed - This is my go-to app for simple document editing for many reasons...

Yes, Word is a robust and feature filled app... problem is, it tries to think for me and OFTEN gets it wrong.

Formatting a document in Word is cumbersome, overly complex, and often doesn't fit with my sense of organization.

Wordpad gives me just the right amount of options and doesn't "automatically assume" that it knows what I want.

I make many documents on the fly that are simple and don't require a lot of "fancy" formatting features -

just simple style edits that are a touch beyond Notepad's capabilities. If MS makes Notepad act like a clone of Wordpad, then fine, I'll be satisfied.

Othewise, I'm gonna look at competitor options.

Since Microsoft probably won't listen to us, the best alternative would be going to Notepad++ and asking them to support rich text formats, especially if you don't want to use an online thingamajig.

We are a community of Windows users who try to help each other. No one from Microsoft here. We don't know why Microsoft has decided to remove WordPad, and Microsoft hasn't explained its reason. If you're looking for an alternative from Microsoft, try Microsoft Word Online. It's free for anyone to use, and it has more features than WordPad.

There is no official announcements why, but I have some speculations:

• Microsoft Wordpad hasn't been updated in years (since Windows 8, circa 2012)
• Microsoft wants to focus on the development of Notepad and Microsoft Word. Even OneNote could be considered an indirect successor in my opinion.
• Wordpad isn't a very good and popular app anyways. It is just a chopped down preview-like version of Word with an old interface (similar to reason 1).
• It takes lots of development to maintain another app.
• Microsoft probably also does for consumer reasons, so people would pay for the full Microsoft word.