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Microsoft retires WordPad after 28 years — app no longer available as of Windows 11 24H2
(www.tomshardware.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I've used windows since the 90s. Not once have I intentionally used WordPad.
It did open by default for some file types for a long time (.doc), usually mangling the content cause it couldn't actually handle them properly. I think it was also the default for .txt files at some point, causing many curse words when editing plain text files, that invisibly weren't so plain any more after... Programs expecting a configuration fine really don't like that sort of thing.
So: I'm very ok with this. Just install LibreOffice or something if you needa Word-like experience. Install notepad++ for anything "plain".