WordPad app has been deprecated in Windows 10 and Windows 11

johnlgalt · Oct 30, 2023

Berton said:
WordPad was handy for those consumers and office workers who had WordPerfect but occasionally would receive a Word .doc document they needed to open but didn't have Word installed. My first computer [in '92] came with WordPerfect for Windows 5.1 installed.

Was, being the key, for anyone else reading this. You're describing a scenario that was an issue 30 years ago on your machine, and IIRC, was eliminated from WP as it started supporting .docx about a decade and a half later, and started supporting the old .DOC format from Office earlier. Some people may not get that facet lol.

These days, there are a plethora of ways to open Office docs without paying a dime to anyone - and WordPad has no relevant use case that other free / open source / native apps cannot already handle. I, for one, and happy it is going away.

Wynona · Oct 30, 2023

johnlgalt said:
Was, being the key, for anyone else reading this. You're describing a scenario that was an issue 30 years ago on your machine, and IIRC, was eliminated from WP as it started supporting .docx about a decade and a half later, and started supporting the old .DOC format from Office earlier. Some people may not get that facet lol.

These days, there are a plethora of ways to open Office docs without paying a dime to anyone - and WordPad has no relevant use case that other free / open source / native apps cannot already handle. I, for one, and happy it is going away.

Yup, my students who don't have MS 365 use Libre Office.

TairikuOkami · Oct 30, 2023

I have just deprecated Notepad, because of a cool new feature, automatically saving every change.

Brink · Oct 30, 2023

TairikuOkami said:
I have just deprecated Notepad, because of a cool new feature, automatically saving every change.

You could turn that off if wanted.

Turn On or Off Automatically Save Session State for Notepad in Windows 11 Tutorial

This tutorial will show you how to turn on or off Notepad automatically saving the session state for your account in Windows 11. Notepad is a fast and simple text editor that can be used to view, edit, and search through plain text documents instantly. Starting with the Notepad version...

www.elevenforum.com

Wisewiz · Oct 30, 2023

Start Menu Search in 23H2 2506 on two PCs: It's still in Program Files, but not showing up here.

antspants · Oct 30, 2023

TairikuOkami said:
I have just deprecated Notepad, because of a cool new feature, automatically saving every change.

It can be handy, I think. And if you close the page and choose don't save, it wont come back. But I get it, if you close notepad and not the page, it remembers your last stage.

hsehestedt · Oct 30, 2023

There was one really big reason that I liked Wordpad. I have extensive notes and checklists that I use as cheat sheets when I perform a clean install of Windows. These are all in Word format. I put those notes on the same thumb drive that I install Windows from. That way, as soon as Windows is installed, I pop open my notes and follow the notes as a reminder of all the final setup steps I need to take.

To work around this I've just converted all the notes to PDF format and I can simply open them in a browser.

Edwin · Oct 30, 2023

TairikuOkami said:
I have just deprecated Notepad, because of a cool new feature, automatically saving every change.

That's why I like Notepad++, it saves without saving!!!

JGToy · Oct 30, 2023

Edwin said:
That's why I like Notepad++, it saves without saving!!!

I second that!

Scott · Oct 31, 2023

Wisewiz said:
Start Menu Search in 23H2 2506 on two PCs: It's still in Program Files, but not showing up here.

I'm on the same version and WordPad shows up in my search. Its also in Windows Tools.

hsehestedt · Oct 31, 2023

TairikuOkami said:
I have just deprecated Notepad, because of a cool new feature, automatically saving every change.

Go into settings and select the option to "Open a new window" when notepad starts. The behavior of notepad will now revert to the "old" behavior.

TairikuOkami · Oct 31, 2023

Edwin said:
That's why I like Notepad++, it saves without saving!!!

Notepad++ is even worse, it remembers each change separately, in a tab. I edited the file, reopened, edited, etc, I did not notice that it is opened multiple times. After a few minutes, I had several files, each with different changes. It was a mess, I lost a few hours of work.

johnlgalt · Oct 31, 2023

TairikuOkami said:
Notepad++ is even worse, it remembers each change separately, in a tab. I edited the file, reopened, edited, etc, I did not notice that it is opened multiple times. After a few minutes, I had several files, each with different changes. It was a mess, I lost a few hours of work.

Notepad++ tells me every single time if I already have a file open that I'm trying to open. Never fails.

It also tells me if the file currently open has been edited since it was opened as soon as I go back to the tab.

Almighty1 · Oct 31, 2023

Edwin said:
That's why I like Notepad++, it saves without saving!!!

Only problem is sometimes it does not recover the session successfully which I had experience 3 times in the last two years and the xml file is gone, the first time I had to use my brain to remember what tabs I had but later found for nirsoft with their PreviousFilesRecovery to bring back the previous xml file.

Edwin · Oct 31, 2023

TairikuOkami said:
Notepad++ is even worse...

Almighty1 said:
... sometimes it does not recover the session successfully

Never had a problem with it! You either save it or you don't.

mecanicogolf · Oct 31, 2023

I don't

Wynona · Nov 1, 2023

trevo said:
Hardly the way to instigate sensible discussion

Harsh words, thar, podnah. Why would anyone think @JAM83's thoughts on Word Pad are any less important than anyone else's?

Wynona · Nov 1, 2023

JAM83 said:
WordPad was useless. If you want something similar, but better than Notepad, but don't want all the features like Word, use Notepad++

I tend to disagree that Word Pad was useless, although when Notepad ++ came out in 2003, it was arguably better than then current Word Pad.

However, be that as it may, for those who cannot and could not (mainly minimum wage workers and senior citizens) afford a paid word processor, Word Pad was a Godsend.

Sure, it's day has come and gone only to be replaced with bigger and better apps/programs. My choice would be Libre Office. forked from Open Office in 2010. Also, there's Apache Open Office. And probably more I don't know about because open source Libre Office (I believe from my research is the second most popular office type program after Microsoft Office) is adequate for my students.

True story: One of my students is using Libre Office to write "the next great American novel". She's sent me some of her first chapters which I opened with Microsoft Word 365 and it works admirably.

So, yeah, the deprecation of Word Pad is no big deal, but back in the day, it was a viable substitute for Microsoft Word.

Wynona · Nov 1, 2023

Edwin said:
I don't think I've ever actually used WordPad, I just looked at it from time to time!

I used it a lot before I could afford Microsoft Office back in the day.

Almighty1 · Nov 1, 2023

Edwin said:
Never had a problem with it! You either save it or you don't.

View attachment 76067

You don't have Notepad++ running 24/7/365 and I never close any of the tabs so I have the exact same things opened each time. I am not talking about saving, the xml file is the one that controls the session layouts. A few of mines are temp tabs so they aren't actual files... The last 4 tabs are not actual files I would save as they are more used like scratch paper where I just paste things to it.

And these are known issues:
Notepad++ v8.5.3 bug-fixes and new features:
Fix session file data loss issue. (Fix #13514)

session.xml is lost - overwritten by Notepad++ after crashes

After a few consecutive PC crashes with open Notepad++, I lost my working session. And it was huge… Over 100 unsaved files (drafts, texts) and some 30-40 ope...

community.notepad-plus-plus.org

Notepad++ got crashed and session.xml got lost and replaced !!

I have no way to restore the file, I try data recovery software and can’t get it to restore the file, I even enabled backup feature in notepad++ but I can’t ...

community.notepad-plus-plus.org

So this is not some new issue as sometimes the program will replace the session.xml with a blank file.

And as I mentioned, it happened 3 times in the last probably 14 years using it and the last time was actually after 8.5.3 when the update installed and when it reopened again, it lost the sessions as session.xml file. I also reboot every 24 hours not by choice because on notebooks, it seems like the resources runs out and the system becomes very sluggish so I reboot and Windows will kill the Notepad++ session on it's own. So it's more of a YMMV situation as it only happened 3 times out of many tens of thousands of notepad++ getting killed by Windows due to restarting Windows and then Notepad++ is launched after Windows logs in after the reboot. I also use EmEditor since the early Windows XP days and never had any loss sessions yet.

After thinking about it really hard, each of the 3 times was when Notepad++ was already running but I ran the .exe installer to upgrade to a new version that came out and the installer closed the running Notepad++ process and started up with only the change.log tab in a new session and overwrote the existing session.xml file so it is not the tabs not saving as those were all saved fine, it's what tabs that are opened in the session that got lost so I just had to re-open all the files if they were files by remembering what I had opened and then the New tabs which were not saved, those would be from %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Notepad++\backup so it's not the data that got lost, it's just the tabs had to be recreated if the session.xml file could not be restored.