neowin[.]net/guides/how-to-restore-old-notepad-in-windows-11/
Today I've got no quarrels with Notepad, though that may change as soon as Microsoft adds spell check with auto correction... I need and use spell check, but there are text files where auto correct can mean disaster [e.g., registry (.reg) files], and I've no idea what issues I'll face when they add Copilot. The linked article is not 100% on the money, but it is correct that you can uninstall Notepad, and while it does not go away, you'll be left with what *looks* like the old version. From what I can tell it's still the same app, with just the new stuff like tabs etc. turned off. *To me* the better way to do it is to just grab a copy of the 196KB app from the Windows folder in a copy of Win10. That's small enough to sit on the Desktop, though you can set up a shortcut as always. And the desktop, where you can drag a file on top of it to open is a great place for it to be. A plus is that you don't have to worry about all the entries in the registry associating Notepad with .txt files either.
As for Wordpad, it's no longer there in the upcoming 24H2 release of Win11. I don't use it much but it is a handy app, weighing in at just 1 1/4MB on disk, so I'm saving/storing the copy found in C:\ Program Files\ Windows NT\ Accessories\.