
In Windows Vista, support for reading Microsoft Word DOC files was removed because of the incorrect rendering and formatting problems, as well as a Microsoft security bulletin that reported a security vulnerability in opening Word files in WordPad. In these and later Windows versions, the RichEdit control was added and as a result, WordPad now supports extensible third-party services (such as grammar and spell check) built using the Text Services Framework (TSF). Windows XP Tablet PC Edition SP2 and Windows Vista include speech recognition, and therefore dictation into WordPad is possible. rtf).Windows XP Service Pack 2 onwards reduced support for opening. Also, unlike previous WordPad versions, it cannot save files in the. It can open Microsoft Word (versions 6.0-2003) files, although it opens newer versions of the.

WordPad for Windows XP added full Unicode support, enabling WordPad to support multiple languages, but UTF-16/UCS-2 Big Endian is not supported. In Windows XP SP1 and later, it uses RichEdit 4.1, including Windows 7. In Windows 95, 98 and Windows 2000, it used Microsoft's RichEdit control, versions 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 respectively. Previous versions of WordPad also supported the "Word for Windows 6.0" format, which is forward compatible with the Microsoft Word format. WordPad natively supports RTF, though it does not support all the features defined in the RTF/Word 2007 specification. However, WordPad is underpowered for work that relies heavily on graphics or typesetting such as most publishing-industry requirements for rendering final hard copy. As such, WordPad is well suited for taking notes, writing letters and stories, or for usage in various tablets, PCs, and smart phones. Pasting into or from an HTML document such as from the internet or email will typically automatically convert most or all of it to RTF (although this is partially browser-dependent).


Among its advantages are low system-resource usage, simplicity, and speed. However WordPad can read, render, and save many Rich Text Format (RTF) features that it cannot create such as tables, strikeout, superscript, subscript, "extra" colors, text background colors, numbered lists, right or left indent, quasi-hypertext and URL linking, and various line spacings. WordPad can format and print text, including fonts, bold, italic, colored, and centered text, etc., but lacks intermediate features such as a spell checker, thesaurus, and the creation of tables.
