Microsoft Word 1.1a ported to run natively on Windows 11

Developer Justin Marshall has released a native 64-bit port of Microsoft Word for Windows 1.1a, allowing the 1990 software to run on modern operating systems like Windows 11 without an emulator.

This project, which utilized Microsoft's 2014 release of the original source code, involved translating 16-bit Assembly language entry points into C/C++ code and adapting Win16-specific behaviors to current Win32 APIs. The result preserves the original user experience, including the classic gray interface and limited formatting options, while ensuring compatibility with modern x64-safe native runtimes.

To build the application, users require a recent version of Visual Studio with C++ workloads, a Windows Software Development Kit (SDK), and the CMake build tool.