I liked having the minimal formatting options in WordPad without the bloat of Word.

Word is now so bloated that I fear using it. It's nice to have Wordpad.

its pretty neat if you dont have access to word, which is likely why they want to get rid of it

It was very niche, but it’s great for viewing docs or other light work on a system you don’t want to install a whole office suite onto.

Can't say I ever needed it in the 28 years I've been using Windows. I'm sure there are plenty who did, though.

As others have said, fast opening quick notes with basic formatting.

For example, if I get an unexpected call I need to write down more than a call back number, Wordpad was my go to.

Well, at least when back when I used Windows regularly.

Microsoft's business model has often gotten in the way of anything they do making sense.

Rtf is far more lightweight than docx. It's closer to markdown.

It was created for people to open Word docs at home before everyone had Office.

Best Windows built-in way to open files with Unix end lines.

In other words: bloat

If they just wanted telemetry they'd just "enhance it" they way they did with the monstrosity that is new Paint or AI assisted notepad.

Does Notepad++ allow rich text?

TBH, I haven't used wordpad since Windows 98

which is why they're getting rid of it

it would probably be pretty easy to just patch telemetry into it, except nobody uses it because why would you

You wouldn’t add AI to a hand bag?! You wouldn’t add AI to a car?! You wouldn’t add AI to a baby?! You wouldn’t shoot a police man?! … and then steal his helmet?! … and then add AI to it?!

WordPad AI

"We need to recapture the Apple market share!"

"Got it boss, we'll make it stupid."

I remember a while back Microsoft did an market research thing and found that of their brands, "Xbox" had positive consumer feedback while many of their other product names weren't nearly as favorable.

So what did they do? Did they try to understand what Xbox did differently to leverage that strategy elsewhere? Did they promote the Xbox marketing team to give them a wider purview?

No. They just renamed Zune Music to Xbox Music and Games for Windows to Xbox for Windows. THAT'LL FIX IT!

The drop-down text menu with dense options was good design. Adding the quick toolbar for more common tasks was also good design.

Moving everything from the text menu to the quick toolbar was bad design.

Just like the evolution of their search functionality. Started as an explorer feature (good), added to the start menu with a focus on program names (good), then they mixed web results from Bing and it's unclear if a program I'm searching for is installed and it found that or if it exists and the result is a link to some website (bad, if I wanted to search the fucking internet, I'd launch a fucking browser), also insisting on using their browser (wtf, they should have been broken up 20 fucking years ago, instead the courts decided to just fucking ignore them doing the same shit they lost the lawsuit for only much worse now).

Just select yourself to chat with in Teams (top option in contacts) and put a battery on the delete key like a professional..

WordPad in Windows 95 was a demonstration of how to use the rich-text editing component built into Windows. Its C++ source code came bundled with MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes - programming library for making Windows apps using C++) as a sample.

The fact that it was a useful tool for end users was essentially just a side effect.

They should preinstall libre office as a replacement.

people still don't, right? I cant imagine it's very common outside of company computers

I didn't mind having something light and built in for when I just wanted quickly to create a little rich text doc and not boot up full fat Word and the corresponding jump in resource usage and file size.

Libre office writer is a thing

WordPad didn't exist until Windows 95. You might be thinking of Microsoft Write, which predated it.

Notepad++

What if I want rich text?

If you don’t plan to upgrade even after security updates end, what’s keeping you there now?

...your only option now is an ongoing subscription to do so.

You can also still buy the Office package without subscription. The latest release is from 2024 and 2021 before that. But of course its expensive for basic stuff.

I've had no real issuses with the new notepad.

I just hope that they don't continue adding too much stuff to it and it becomes the new wordpad and we don't have a basic box to put text anymore.

I've used windows since dos and have never once used wordpad in my entire life.
For basic text, notepad is just fine. For anything fancy, wordpad isn't good enough.
I feel that it doesn't have a place anywhere. It's like the bizarre paint 3D they've recently discontinued.

My office had a period where we used LibreOffice and others because of some licensing dispute with Microsoft. However that period of peace ended when we migrated to 365.

It is an obvious maneuver, to be fair to Nadella. Not only will this push more over to subscription based word processing, but it also closes one of the easier avenues useds have to avoid aggregated data farming. Their next move should be to turn Notepad into a complementary tiered program:
Tier 1) Use at no charge, but your data pays for it instead.
Tier 2) Notepad becomes an extra pay to unlock feature of 365.

Problem is, it's not installed by default

I suppose you could install Word. If you want just Word, you can jump through a few hoops to make the Office Deployment Tool install only Word.

I don't think that is a reasonable solution for your use case, but I suspect making people use (and buy) the actual Office Suite is the motivation.

Edit: I see my point has been phrased poorly - I was trying to outline that I suspect MS' point is making people get Word (Office) instead. Maybe I'm just plain wrong on that though.

Gnome has already been ruined by a similar failed desire for a clean and simple interface.