When installing Windows on a PC you always get two built-in writing programs, one that is easy and immediate to access, is the Notepad, which opens all .txt files, which represents the notebook. The other program, on the other hand, is the more hidden Wordpad, which often remains unused by most people, which resembles Microsoft Word, which however does not open documents written with Word, i.e. .doc.
Notepad and WordPad are both developed by Microsoft, they have been present in every version of Windows practically always, they are both word processing programs, different from each other, still very useful.
The main difference is that the Notepad is a simple and basic text editor that has no options for formatting text or adding other elements such as images, while WordPad is just a word processor like Word, for writing documents which includes the options of basis for formatting and printing the document.
READ ALSO: 10 Tricks with the Windows Notepad (Notepad)
Notepad or Notepad is a " text editor " type program that is used to write quick notes or to record text-only information in TXT files .
While it is possible to create several paragraphs of text with Notepad using line breaks (pressing the Enter key), the program has no formatting options and, for example, does not allow you to change the font, size or make the bold text.
The lack of formatting and images makes txt files much smaller than a word file so much that a 100, 000 word text can be saved to a file that weighs less than a mega.
The Notepad is an excellent choice for creating web pages (HTML documents) and for writing basic scripts or computer programs, since these types of documents do not require any text formatting.
As a text editor, the Notepad remains a great program for writing small notes, for a shopping list or even for leaving messages on the computer
It is also very useful for removing formatting from text copied from the internet, so that you can then paste it somewhere else as plain text.
For this purpose, just paste the text into a new txt text document and then copy it again from notepad and paste it into Word or any other program.
Text editor txt files are very popular on every computer because many programs save their configurations within .txt files that are found in almost all the folders of installed programs.
The txt file is also appreciated by writers and typists who prefer it for simplicity in large projects and for making the first draft.
The WordPad, on the other hand, is a writing program also called Word Processor in which the text is formatted and adapted for printing.
The files produced by a word processor are designed to be read, modified and printed often, complete with often complex formatting, with support for the insertion of hyperlinks, images, tables and even videos.
The standard format of files created with a writing program is .RTF, although the best known is the .DOC or .DOCX format, which is Word, the most popular writing program in the world.
A Word processor can also read and modify the .txt files, to add formatting (i.e. paragraphs, bold, orientation etc.), even if then saving a txt in rtf will make it incompatible with the Notepad or others text editor.
Microsoft Notepad was born even before Windows, so much so that it already existed in the first MS-DOS system of 1983, and has remained simple and the same for all these years, becoming a universal writing tool.
WordPad, however, was included by Microsoft as a free program in Windows 95 and has remained a standard component of the operating system with subsequent updates and improvements.
Microsoft has specially reserved for its Microsoft Word program the most advanced features such as spell checking and advanced formatting options that are absent in WordPad.
In practice, it has always been the standard and free tool for writing documents, although today, fortunately, there are much more complete and better free alternatives.
For example, in another article we have seen the best alternatives to Windows Note Pad, among which Notepad ++ stand out, ideal especially for those who write programming languages and Microsoft OneNote.
As word processor and free alternative of WordPad there is, however, LibreOffice Writer, included in the LibreOffice suite completely free and equivalent to Microsoft Word, and also other programs, such as AbiWord, among the best free alternatives to Microsoft word .
