Windows 7 comes bundled with a basic text editing program called WordPad. You can consider it as a light version of Microsoft Word and more advanced than other text editors such as NotePad. WordPad enables you to create, edit, view, and print text documents. It helps you type memos, reports, and other simple documents. In this article I will show you where to find WordPad, how to work with the new interface, create & save a new document in WordPad and how to print it.

WordPad Comparison: Windows 7 Version vs. Others

WordPad is included in almost all versions of Microsoft Windows from Windows 95 onwards. The application has always come in very handy as a quick and easy to use text editor for documents.
In older WordPad versions you could see a menus and buttons based interface. The application had two toolbars: the Standard toolbar and the Formatting one, each with its set of buttons for commonly used commands.

The new version of WordPad is even more friendly due to the new and exciting feature called theribbon bar, which was first introduced with Microsoft Office 2007.

In older versions of WordPad, uncommon commands were hidden away in menus. If you wanted to insert the Date and Time in a document, as there was no toolbar button available, you had to search for it in the Insert menu. In the new version of WordPad, this command is just a click away as it has a button on the ribbon.

NOTE: You can find further information about the ribbon on Wikipedia.

The ‘Quick Access Toolbar’ is another new & interesting feature. It is located at the top of the WordPad window and contains some of the most important buttons: Save, Undo and Redo. You can add buttons like New, Open, Print or remove any of the existing ones. Just click on the arrow and choose the options you want to add or remove.

Another way to add items to ‘Quick Access Toolbar’ is to right-click on the option that you want to add and choose ‘Add to Quick Access Toolbar’.

Another appreciated new feature is also the ability of viewing and editing documents written in the Open Office (.odt) and Microsoft Office 2007 (.docx) formats. However, it is no longer able to open the ‘.doc’ format used by older versions of Microsoft Office. If you want to open this format, you will have to use Word Viewer.
Despite this problem, the new version of WordPad is really good. To find out more about how to use it, read on.

Where to Find WordPad

You can open the application using several methods: either directly from its Start Menu shortcut found in the Accessories folder or by using the search box and typing the word ‘wordpad’.

This will open the WordPad application and its window should look similar to the one below.

An Overview of the WordPad Interface

The main window includes the ribbon which is similar to the one present in Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010. As you can see in the image below, everything is split into well defined areas.

The main menu offers some basic options like creating a new document, opening an existing one, saving, printing and customizing page dimensions.

The first tab, called Home, offers a number of customizing options, grouped by functionality. You will find the standard Font and Paragraph options in the designated area of the application. In this section, you can change the spacing, alignment along with font, size and color.

Next you have the Insert section where you can find the options that concern inserting a picture, a custom drawing, date and time or others objects such as charts or other documents.

You’ve got also a few searching options such as Find or Replace.

The View tab offers a few display options, including zoom and the ability to make some taskbars appear and disappear.

How to create a WordPad document

To create a new document just open the application and begin to write you text like in the image below.

For formatting, use the appropriate areas from the ribbon, as shown in the previous section of this article.

When done, save your document by going to the menu and choosing ‘Save As’. There are five options available and all can be seen in the screenshot below.

After selecting the format, a window will appear where you have to select the location and format of the file. When done, press the Save button.

How to Open a WordPad document

If you forgot something about the document you just made or you just want to open another one, you can do that by using Open option from the menu.

A new window will appear where you just have to choose the location, select your document and press Open.

For last used documents you have a list of recently opened items from which you can choose.

How to print a document

The application offers three options for the printing area: Print, Quick print and ‘Print preview’ as you can see in the image below.

‘Print preview’ allows you to see how your document will look before you print it. To use this option click the WordPad menu, choose Print, and then click ‘Print preview’. After you previewed your document click ‘Close print preview’ button.

If you select the Print option a new window will appear where you can choose the desired printer, page range and complete number of copies and press the Print button.

The ‘Quick print’ option will automatically print the document using the default printer settings.

Conclusion

The Windows 7 version of WordPad is a big improvement over the previous versions both in terms of usability and features. However, it has an important downside. Even if it can open files saved in Microsoft Word 2007 or 2010, it cannot open the older ‘.doc’ format. And this can be quite a nuisance to some people. Leaving this issue aside, if you have any questions or tips regarding this tool, don’t hesitate to leave a comment.