I came across this Learn article and I found it personally saddening. A number of Windows’ “standard” features are being removed in upcoming updates, several of which I still use from time to time. Three of them, WordPad, Paint3D, and Maps, have fairly straightforward work-arounds.
Maps
This is probably the easiest to deal with. Per the article, “If you wish to still use maps powered by the Bing service, please visit https://www.bing.com/maps.”; from here, the process is simple with any bowser that supports Progressive Web App (PWA) creation. The exact click sequence varies from browser to browser, but once you’ve made the page an app, you have a complete, if not a bit superior replacement.
WordPad
This isn’t a replacement app, it is genuine, but you need access to a windows 10 machine, where it still exists. The original path is:
C:\Program Files\Windows NT\Accessories
At this location, you’ll find three items, wordpad.exe, WordpadFilter.dll, and a folder labeled en-US. Copy these three to a thumb drive, take them to your Windows 11 machine and put them in a folder anywhere. I chose mostly the same path, I made a separate WordPad folder under C:\Program Files on the odd chance Microsoft might find my replacement files and remove them again if I used it he original path. After everything is installed, right-click on the wordpad.exe file in the folder and select Show more options. Go to Send to and then Desktop (create shortcut) to create a shortcut. Copy the shortcut and paste it into the Start Menu Programs folder:
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs
Next, open the Start menu, click All apps, and scroll down to find WordPad. Now you can pin it to the Start menu or the taskbar. (This last step is necessary because WordPad won’t appear in the search results otherwise. I pinned it to the Start menu). You can also specify in app settings that WordPad can be used to open documents. To do this, go to Settings > Apps > Default apps and select WordPad from the list. For example, you can set it to open all RTF documents.
Paint3D
This also is the original system, but there’s no transfer from an older OS that I’ve found so far. What I have found is that several older software repositories have taken care of that for me. One of the more well known of these is Softonic. I’ve found it available at several other sources as well. This is Microsoft’s installer package that used t be available at the Microsoft Store. It can be used to install the app or re-install it, should you have to do a Windows re-install or the like.
Caveats!!
With the exception of Maps, both WordPad and Paint3D will not see any updates nor bug fixes, and the chance will always exist that changes to the Windows OS and/or changes to the respective input/output file formats may render them both useless. In the meanwhile, however, enjoy!!
