Microsoft pulls the plug on WordPad – these are the alternative text editors we recommend

Nearly thirty years ago, Microsoft unveiled WordPad, a basic text editing software that later often came pre-installed on Windows machines, but now it’s going the way of Windows Movie Maker and Internet Explorer, and getting discontinued. 

WordPad was packaged as a part of Windows 95, which was Microsoft’s flagship operating system back in the day, and has been included in each release of Windows since then. It allowed a user to perform basic text edits without any additional software, with capabilities like being able to include images and links to other files, and supported multiple popular text formats. 

Now, Microsoft has decided to retire WordPad, as detailed in an updated version of the latest Windows software documentation. It explains that as part of planned development lifecycles, some features get introduced and some get removed to improve user experience. To this end, WordPad will not see any new developments or updates, and it will be removed from Windows 11 in a future software update.

Windows 95

(Image credit: Microsoft)

A potential security risk

There is also speculation by Bleeping Computer that WordPad posed a security risk. Earlier in the year, some computers running Windows were infected with Qbot malware, which dodged detection by exploiting a hijacking flaw in the WordPad app for Windows 10.

So, despite our nostalgia for the software, it’s perhaps best if Microsoft does indeed drop it.

If you are an avid WordPad user, or just looking for some good free text editors, don’t worry, I’ve got you. Here are some alternative program recommendations you can get for free both from Microsoft and from third-party developers. 

Microsoft’s own recommendations 

Microsoft’s first recommendation is one you are probably already familiar with: Microsoft Word.

You can use Microsoft Word online for free with an Outlook account. You can then sign into Microsoft 365 online, accessing Microsoft’s cloud-based suite of Office apps including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. You can also download Word as a standalone app with a Microsoft 365 subscription, but this is not free.

A screenshot of Microsoft 365 and all of the apps it offers.

(Image credit: Future)

Microsoft Word continues to be a favorite choice for many users, offering a wealth of features for writing, editing and formatting text, as well as document sharing, and uses rich text file types, most notably .docx, a proprietary file type that not every text editor can open or edit. You can access Word online free here. 

Its second recommendation is another staple text editor that’s been featured in Windows for years: Notepad. It’s primarily intended for plain text documents such as .txt files. While WordPad is being dropped, Notepad continues to see updates to its functionality. 

You can now open multiple files at the same time with its new tabbed interface, have sessions be autosaved, and carry on working on a file in a different program like Word. 

Updated Notepad in Windows 11

(Image credit: Microsoft)

Notepad is a favorite tool among programmers, especially for developing Windows programs and applications. One big feature it doesn’t have besides the rich text format features is spell check, so it’s worth checking your text by copy and pasting it elsewhere.

If your device came with Windows installed on it, you should already have Notepad installed. You can search for it in the search box in your taskbar.

Free third-party substitutes for WordPad 

The first substitute I would recommend is a favorite among modern professionals and students: Google Docs. All you need is a Google account, which you can sign up for using any valid email address for free.

Microsoft Word does offer more layout and formatting options, but Google Docs is optimized for collaboration between users and changes are constantly saved in real time. If you’re already familiar with text editors, it’s pretty easy to pick up. It’s part of the Google Suite of apps that you can use in conjunction with Google Docs, such as Slide, Google’s presentation software.

A screenshot of the Google Docs starting screen.

(Image credit: Future)

Next up, I’d recommend LibreOffice Writer. LibreOffice is a suite of free open-source software that’s an alternative to Microsoft Office, and Writer is the suite’s word processing software that has a ton of text formatting and layout features, as well as compatibility with Microsoft Word document formats, including the newer .docx format.

LibreOffice also sees active development, and frequently receives updates and new features. LibreOffice has a polished interface that is very user-friendly, and you’ll be up and running in no time.

My final recommendation is WPS Office Writer. In order to get this, you’ll have to download WPS Office.

Once installed, you’ll either have to create or sign in with a WPS account, or alternatively you can sign in with Google, email, or Facebook.

WPS Office Writer has an interface that’ll be familiar to Microsoft Word users and it even has a built-in WPS AI assistant to improve your writing and help generate ideas (you can also download the WPS AI assistant separately).

You can then integrate WPS Office with Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive.

Screenshot of WPS Office Writer software.

(Image credit: Future)

Other features that are being disabled 

There are other features that will also be discontinued in a future Windows update. Cortana, its voice assistant challenger to the likes of Alexa and Google Assistant, will be turned off

Microsoft is also ending support and functionality of the Microsoft Support Diagnostic Tool (MSDT) and it will be turning off the old Transport Layer Security to improve Windows 11’s security. Cortana’s been replaced by Microsoft Copilot, which debuted at this year’s Microsoft Build conference, and aims to bring artificial intelligence features to Windows 11 in the future.

A Microsoft Copilot page on a blue background

(Image credit: Microsoft)

The full details and explanation of changes, including the discontinuation of features, can be found in the full updated software documentation for Windows. As far as we know, Wordpad will remain functional and accessible until the Windows update is actually installed. Microsoft hasn’t yet specified a date for when this will be, however.

If you really miss WordPad, and are reluctant to use one of the programs I’ve listed above, Neowin speculates that Windows enthusiasts will likely do their best to preserve the program. Microsoft Paint was also headed for a similar fate, but after an outcry from users described by Bleeping Computer, it wasn’t killed off entirely, and made available for download in the Microsoft Store. If there’s enough demand, Microsoft may consider doing something similar to WordPad.

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Windows 11 no longer has Cortana as Microsoft pulls the plug on digital assistant

It’s official – Microsoft has made the move to scrap Cortana in Windows 11, as promised a while back.

If you recall, back in June, Microsoft let us know that Cortana was going to be killed off later in 2023. We then heard a firm date for that to happen, namely August, and the first sightings of some folks seeing Cortana dumped were reported just over a week ago.

And now it seems Microsoft is fully pulling support for the digital assistant.

Windows Central reports that the deprecation of Cortana is fully underway, and you’ll be notified the assistant is no longer available if you try to access it in Windows 11. Along with that notification, a link is provided to a support page where you can learn more about what’s going on here.

The change seems to be rolling out for everyone on Windows 11 now, though some folks may still have access to Cortana – but not for much longer.

Cortana will also be getting the elbow from Microsoft Teams later this year, we’re told, and will only remain in Outlook mobile by the time the end of 2023 rolls around.


Analysis: Curtains for Cortana across the board

Waving goodbye to Cortana won’t be a difficult task for most users. After all, certainly for the general computing population using Windows 11, Cortana wasn’t used much anyway. Microsoft had already angled the digital assistant more towards business use because of this – but Cortana will also be dumped from Microsoft Teams, as well, soon enough.

The reason for getting rid of Cortana pretty much everywhere (except Outlook mobile, for some reason) is obvious, and that’s the incoming Windows Copilot AI, a much more ambitious desktop assistant.

This will basically be the Bing AI integrated into a side panel in Windows 11, but with a lot of extra abilities to customize Windows settings in various ways, to save you the trouble of having to hunt for these (options that might be buried deep in submenus somewhere).

Microsoft’s Copilot is already in test builds of Windows 11, but right now, it’s still a barebones incarnation of what the software giant has promised. Meaning it’s pretty much just a built-in Bing chatbot with a few very limited powers to manipulate the Windows 11 environment, though Microsoft is going to build out the latter facets considerably going forward.

Rumor has it Copilot could debut in Windows 11 23H2, and clearing out Cortana before then would make sense in that light. We still have our doubts that Copilot will be impressive enough to launch in just a few short months though (mind you, Bing AI itself not being ready didn’t stop Microsoft launching the chatbot, either).

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ChatGPT pulls plug on Bing integration after people used it to bypass paywalls

Party’s over for ChatGPT Plus subscribers as OpenAI announced it has temporarily disabled the Browse with Bing beta tool from its service. The reason? Apparently, people used the feature to completely bypass paywalls and consume content for free.

Browsing with Bing gave ChatGPT the ability to pull information from recently published sources so it could answer time-sensitive questions. However, it appears the company’s developers underestimated the feature’s capabilities. According to an official help page, “if a user specifically asks for a URL’s full text,” the AI will fulfill the request, including displaying content from paywalled articles. OpenAI stated it’s fixing this issue because it wants “to do right by content owners.” The tool will return someday in the future. Exactly when is unknown at the time of this writing.

What’s also unknown is how the AI was able to bypass paywalls although there is some speculation on the ChatGPT subreddit. One user points out that since “some paywalls are simply pasted over” articles, ChatGPT could simply read the code rendering the text and display the content without a problem. 

Analysis: Avoiding trouble

The response to this announcement has been pretty negative as subscribers flocked to OpenAI’s Community forums to air their grievances.  Some state Browse with Bing was the sole reason they purchased ChatGPT Plus in the first place. One poster says the feature allowed them to read some repositories on GitHub or forum posts that were in another language. Others said that without Browse with Bing, they’re not getting their money’s worth.

As angry as these people are, it’s totally understandable why OpenAI would disable the tool. The company has been hit left, right, and center by multiple lawsuits. Just to give you an idea, you have the lawsuit from the California-based Clarkson Law Firm which alleges “ChatGPT massively violated the copyrights and privacy of countless people when it used data scraped from the internet to train its tech.” There are authors Paul Tremblay and Mona Awad who claim OpenAI used their books to train the generative AI “without attribution”. And you have Georgia radio host Mark Walters suing the developers for defamation after ChatGPT claimed he embezzled “funds from a non-profit organization.”

What's crazy is all those lawsuits are just from this past month.

Needless to say, OpenAI is currently navigating some rough waters. The last thing the company needs right now is to get hit with yet another lawsuit. Better safe than sorry.

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