When you think of “Word Processor bundled with Windows”… what springs to mind?
Wordpad? Notepad? How about Word or Works?
Well, in Ye Olden Times (tm), the first word processing software to ship for Microsoft Windows was… Microsoft Write. A simple, extremely lightweight word processor that (at least in earlier versions) used the .WRI file type (a proprietary file format that contained basic styling information).
Let’s go on a quick tour through every single version of Microsoft Write to ever be released... including versions for Mac and Atari.
Seriously.
1985 - Microsoft Write for Windows 1.0
That, right there, is the beginning of Microsoft Write -- back on the very first version of Windows.
To start with: That Windows 1.0 interface. Man. I tell ya. Makes my eyes bleed every time I see it.
But also... this was a surprisingly capable piece of software... without an ounce of bloat. Almost UNIX-like in design: Simple and to the point. Yet capable.
1987 - Microsoft Write for Macintosh
Microsoft Write for Macintosh was released in 1987… and wasn’t actually Microsoft Write… per se. It was the original version of Microsoft Word… tweaked. And stripped down to a bare-bones feature set.
It was, for a time, the “cheap little brother” of Microsoft Word. Didn’t sell great and wasn’t long for this world.
1987 - Microsoft Write for Windows 2.0
New version of Windows gets a new version of Write!
But, really, not much changed in Write for Windows 2.0. Same menu structure and features.
1988 - Microsoft Write for Atari ST
Now here’s something I bet most people aren’t familiar with!
Did you know that "Microsoft Write" was developed and released… for the Atari ST?
It’s true! However, it was not based (in any way) on the code base of Write for Windows 1.0. In fact, it was a ported, & re-branded version of the very first “Microsoft Word” release for the Macintosh!
And, while it was released in 1988.. it was actually originally announced back in 1986. There’s a (not too glowing) review of it in a 1988 issue of Start Magazine that I found highly entertaining.
“Despite its lengthy gestation, Write is a disappointment. It has fewer bugs than WordPerfect, but mostly because it has fewer features. It also takes a non-standard approach to both word processing and the ST, the latter probably due to its Macintosh ancestry. Unofficial but reliable word from Atari sources is that Write will not be updated or enhanced. For better or worse, what we have now is the final version.”
No updates or new versions of Microsoft Write for Atari ST were ever released. It was, essentially, dead on arrival.
1990 - Microsoft Write for Windows 3.0
Once again, very little change to Microsoft Write with the release of Windows 3.0. Though there is a new “Help” menu now. So that’s nice.
1992 - Microsoft Write for Windows 3.1
Starting with Windows 3.1, Write has the same UI but is a bit more powerful… in that it can handle OLE (Object Linking and Embedding).
1995 - Microsoft Write for Windows NT 3.51
Which brings us to the final version of Microsoft Write to ever be released.
It was bundled with Windows NT 3.51 — which, as it happens, is the final version of Windows NT to include the older “Windows 3.x style” program manager.
In future versions of Windows, Microsoft would continue to include a “write.exe” that simply pointed to the new “Wordpad” word processor, which took the place of Write starting with Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0.
All-in-all, Microsoft Write was a lightweight, but capable, word processor. One that served Microsoft Windows users well until it was replaced by Wordpad in the mid 1990s.
The fact that there was a Mac and Atari ST version is just an added, and highly amusing, bonus.
