What happened? After my last update  on January 4 2025 of my WIN 11 Asus laptop -  Microsoft rudely removed the beloved WordPad, which was completely ever-free-of-charge, default in any PC or laptop, blessed (because, again, free of charge), beautiful (it had all colors and fonts and almost all Word features) - the writing program, which an average taxpayer, who needs to make the ends meet financially, has been always using for his or her document creation needs.

	Wow!

	Is it greediness of Microsoft?  Hatred for fellow-human-beings who try so hard to survive in the all-around-rising-inflation world, where a simple person cannot afford 12 eggs anymore because they cost 10 dollars. Thanks god I almost do not eat them, but there are millions of people who, normally, like to have a classic egg-and-bacon breakfast.

	Have you seen chat on Neighbor-platform? Americans are freezing in their houses, or apartments - not turning on heat because it is painful or hardly possible to pay the high bills of Edison or SWGas (notorious SouthWest Gas company) in Southern California now, in wintertime, when the night temperatures may fall to 33 degrees Fahrenheit (right now, at the moment. when I am writing this).  Let's remember that the freezing temperature is 32 in Fahrenheit and 0 in Celsius. So, we are not far from actually freezing here in the coldest part of 24-hour day.

	Homo sapiens, a human being, wants to use a heater, but the bill will be so high, that a homo sapiens better would turn off that heater and put on some woolen socks and cover himself or herself with three quilts to sleep through the cold night.

	After my step aside, and mentally, stepping outside to see the temperature now in the high desert of California, let's come back to my topic of the bad removal by Microsoft of the free writing default WordPad.

	Let's brainstorm, using our wonderful, human-being's brain and see what we can use now in order to create a free of charge document on our home computers or laptops. 
	And the second question of mine here, as of an educator, or any writing person, a student, is - How do I save all my work created in rtf (WordPad)? How do I open those documents and how do I save them?

	I will share with you what I did - trying to answer these questions with a firm solution. Maybe somebody wants to do the same - unless they have better ways which I do not know. Let's remember that there are usually a few alternatives to the possible solutions of any problems. 
Usually, I never said "always". 

	I am an optimist though, and we live in the AI time which supposedly should help a human being. And the biggest and fastest help is exactly in the search of solutions for different computer tasks.

	So, what have I tried to replace my ever-beloved, extinct by Microsoft now, WordPad?

	I opened ever-reachable but never-used-by-me, poor-to-my-perspective, default NotePad.
	I have seen before that a friend, a computer engineer of the first generations of people of this major in science, had always been using this NotePad. I was involuntarily, occasionally, randomly watching that, and I was always wondering - how could he be using so limited in possibilities (for me, a simple educator, not a computer major) writing NotePad?

        Well, now I know that those past observations have served me somewhat at the moment because I am familiar to some extent with this poor, limited performance (for a writing person), NotePad.

	I am not going to discuss here the poor features of Note Pad:  AI will do the job much faster. 
	I am not going to name the features of WordPad which are lost now.  I already mentioned a little bit above here - colors, and also highlighting, easy font change for any selected paragraph, etc. 
	There's no point of crying over spilt milk.

	A normal human being has to quickly adapt to the new environment (yes, it is a bit hostile for me here now, and it has been just delivered as such to me by the last update of my Win 11 laptop by Microsoft).  To adapt - means - to find other tolerable, functional solutions.
	So, for the time being, I just started using this NotePad. Yes, uncomfortable, yes, limited, but somehow, to some extent workable, In the worst-case scenario, when I need a normal document, or a book to compile - I will go ahead and download some free OpenOffice, or whatever is available on Microsoft or Google apps, and I will be working that.

Thank you for reading me so far - those who have.

Disclaimer: 
         I know that there are people with Apple devices Win 11, etc, etc, and there are people who keep computer engineers on a retainer for regular help.  However, I am a regular educator who works within free programs for adult student population.  While trying to help myself when difficulties appear - like this one when an innocent free document writing program just have been drastically taken away by kind uncle Microsoft - I also try to help people around me who are not educators and may be slower in adapting to new conditions.



Steps You Can Take to save your WordPad documents:



1 
Search online for a free WordPad download.  If you see many flashing adds on some page you open in your search - close it immediately. You do not want to be caught in some kind of false downloads for new fat-losing diets or newly created domestic novelties or clothes-purchasing.  Just find the bearable looking page which offers a free download of WordPad.

2 
Bear in mind, that this WordPad which you may download now, after January 4, 2025, will not be inside your Win 11 anymore  because it has been officially removed. However, it will be in a shape of a so-to-say some kind of surface, light application in your computer.  

3  
For example, if you want just to copy your old WordPad document into your new "Light version of WordPad" - it will paste it there as a picture, and it will not be editable.
Nevertheless, you will see all the info. Be OK that you will not edit it anymore. Just leave it alone as a picture there, for your references, and then just start writing your new impressions on the top of it. So, this new writing will be editable. 

4  
Name your document in a way that will be slightly different from your old document's name. This way you just have created a new version of this light WordPad for yourself in your computer - a rtf-extension (Rich Text Format) document.
However, let's keep in mind, that since Microsoft eliminated forever WordPad, let's not indulge on it anymore, but instead, let's find new free writing programs.  As I mentioned, OpenOffice is one of them.


       Yes, I am aware that they say that there are free versions of Word out there. 
I do not spend my time on that search: been there, done that. I am doing what I am doing, and I just have shared it with all who get to read me. 

There are many ways, and this is one of many. I hope it will be helpful to somebody, as it was helpful to me yesterday when I was hit by a shock of losing access to all my WordPad documents. And, as a matter of fact, I do have many files in each computer I use. Many of them do not repeat each other.

Thank you for reading me!

Zoia Eliseyeva on January 5 2025 from California, USA

Happy New Year (of Wise Snake - by Chinese calendar) !!!
Good luck to all !!!
 :D



+++++ END of POST January 5 2025 +++++