WordPad is a basic word processor included with Windows 95 and later versions, up until Windows 11. It is more advanced than the Windows Notepad text editor by supporting rich text editing, but has a subset of the functionality of Microsoft Word. It replaces Microsoft Write, which was included with all previous versions of Windows (version 3.11 and earlier).
Earlier versions primarily supported a subset of the Rich Text Format (RTF, .rtf) and Microsoft Word 6.0 formats, although support for these formats were removed with Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista respectively for security reasons. Current versions are capable of saving Office Open XML (OOXML, .docx) and OpenDocument Text (.odt) files.
In September 2023, Microsoft announced that WordPad will be removed from "a future release of Windows", recommending Notepad and Microsoft Word.
Features[]
WordPad can format and print text but lacks intermediate features such as a spell checker, thesaurus, and support for tables. As such, it is suitable for writing letters or short pieces, but underpowered for work that relies heavily on graphics or typesetting.
WordPad natively supports the Rich Text Format, though it does not support all the features defined in the RTF/Word 2007 specification. Previous 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, it used Microsoft's RichEdit control, versions 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0, respectively. In Windows XP SP1 to Windows 7, it uses RichEdit 4.1.
WordPad for Windows XP added full Unicode support, enabling WordPad to support multiple languages, but UTF-16/UCS-2 Big Endian is not supported. It can open Microsoft Word (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 or .rtf).Windows XP Service Pack 2 onwards reduced support for opening .WRI files for security purposes.
Windows XP Tablet PC Edition SP2 and Windows Vista include speech recognition, and therefore dictation into WordPad is possible. In these and later Windows versions, the RichEdit control was added and as a result, WordPad now supports extensible third-party services (such as grammar and spell check) built using the Text Services Framework (TSF).
In Windows Vista, support for reading Microsoft Word DOC files was removed because of the incorrect rendering and formatting problems, as well as a Microsoft security bulletin that reported a security vulnerability in opening Word files in WordPad. For viewing older (97-2003) as well as newer (Office Open XML) documents, Microsoft recommends Word Viewer, which is available for free. Native Office Open XML and ODF support was released in the Windows 7 version of WordPad.
Microsoft has updated the user interface for WordPad in Windows 7, giving it an Office 2010-style ribbon that replaces the application menu and toolbars. Other bundled Windows applications such as Paint have had similar changes of interface.
History[]
WordPad was introduced in Windows 95, replacing Microsoft Write, which came 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 Classes sample application with MFC 3.2 and later, shortly before the release of Windows 95. It is still available for download from the MSDN website.[1]
The default font used from Windows 95 to Windows Vista was Arial at 10pt; in Windows 7 it was changed to Calibri at 11pt.
In January 2020, a Windows Insider build of Windows 10 tested an advertisement steering WordPad users to Office web apps. WordPad will be removed from future releases of Windows, with the alternatives being Notepad and Microsoft Word.
References[]
- ↑ "WORDPAD Sample: The Windows Application". MSDN. Microsoft. Archived from the original on 29 April 2007. Retrieved 11 November 2021.
See also[]
External links[]
- How to use WordPad at Microsoft
- Help in WordPad at Microsoft Support
- Windows Vista: Using WordPad (archived 2009-10-15)
- WordPad at Computer Hope (2020-12-31)
- WordPad at Wikipedia
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Wikipedia (article: WordPad )
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