WordPad Replacement, Online
Microsoft removed WordPad from Windows 11 version 24H2 and Windows Server 2025. This opens your
.rtf files in a browser tab instead, and saves them back.
This is not Microsoft WordPad. It is an independent replacement, not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to Microsoft. WordPad is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft's own notice about the removal is on Microsoft Learn.
Windows took WordPad away
WordPad shipped with every copy of Windows for close to thirty years. Microsoft deprecated it on 1 September 2023, and in March 2024 confirmed that it would be removed from all editions of Windows from version 24H2 onwards, along with Windows Server 2025. It is gone rather than hidden, and there is no optional feature that brings it back.
Microsoft's own advice is to use Word for rich text documents and Notepad for plain text. That is fine
if you have a Microsoft 365 subscription, and no help at all if you just double-clicked an
.rtf file that you have had since 2011 and got a dialog asking which app to use.
That is what this page is for. It opens the files, it lets you edit them, and it saves them back in the same format, without installing anything.
What it opens and saves
- .rtf both ways. Rich Text Format was WordPad's native format, and it is handled directly rather than converted through something else.
- .docx both ways. Word documents are read for their text and character formatting, and can be saved back out.
- .odt for opening. OpenDocument text, as produced by LibreOffice.
- .txt both ways, when you want the words and none of the formatting.
Formatting covers bold, italic, underline and strikethrough, font family and size, text colour, left, centre and right alignment, bulleted and numbered lists, and indenting. There is a date and time button, which was on WordPad's Insert menu and turns out to be the thing people used it for most when keeping a running log. Zoom and print are there too.
What it will not do, said plainly
Tables, images, headers and footers, footnotes and embedded objects are not supported. A document containing them will still open, but that content is dropped rather than converted, so do not use this to edit something whose layout matters and then save over the original.
Old .doc files from Word 97-2003 cannot be opened at all. That format is a binary OLE
compound file rather than text or XML, and reading it in a browser is not practical. Open it once in
Word, LibreOffice or Google Docs, save it as .rtf or .docx, and it will open
here from then on.
For anything with a real layout, use LibreOffice Writer, which is free, or Word if you have it. This page is for the common case: a document that is mostly words, on a machine where you cannot install anything.
Why RTF is still worth keeping
Rich Text Format is a plain text format. Open one in a text editor and you can read the words with formatting instructions around them, which means it survives being emailed, copied between operating systems and left alone for a decade far better than most document formats do.
It also opens nearly everywhere: Word, LibreOffice, Pages, TextEdit, Google Docs and this page. If you are choosing a format for something you want to still be able to read in fifteen years, RTF is a better bet than most of the alternatives.
Where your document is kept
In your browser, on this device. Opening a file reads it locally and uploads nothing, and what you are working on is saved to this browser's storage so it survives a closed tab. It does not sync to another machine, another browser shows an empty document, and clearing your browsing data removes it. Save to a real file for anything that matters. The privacy policy covers this in full.
The other editors here
If you want plain text with no formatting at all, the notepad and the text editor are faster. For code and config files with syntax highlighting and tabs, use the Notepad++ alternative.