PC Help: Wordpad and Notepad

In all versions of Windows I bump into Wordpad and Notepad. What’s the difference between them and what can they be used for?
Tony Atkinson

Notepad is a simple text-editing program that has existed in all versions of Windows for several years. With it, you can edit text documents (the ones that end with .txt and have an icon of a folded-over piece of paper with lines on it) but nothing more complicated.

Notepad cannot deal with fonts, formatting or other word processing features but if you want to make a simple note for yourself, Notepad will do the job.

Wordpad is a step up from that – it can deal with some fonts and formatting and a couple of types of document but it’s not powerful as a word processor.

If you don’t have access to Microsoft Word or Works, a good alternative is Open Office, a free download with a decent word processor and spreadsheet. The download is big at 100MB.

The version of Wordpad supplied with Windows XP can also read Microsoft Word documents. Sadly the version supplied with Windows Vista cannot.