WordPerfect Office

Why WordPerfect Office Professional Edition may be the right office software suite for your business

By Elliot Feldman, freelance television and new media writer/editor, Coney Dog Productions

Microsoft Office is the current market leader of all office software suite applications. WordPerfect Office Professional Edition is a distant contender. At one time, WordPerfect's standalone word processing software was the market leader, preceding Microsoft's standalone word processing software, Word. Despite its market share decline, there are still companies that only use the WordPerfect program and its office suite because they just aren't comfortable in any other word processing environment.

WordPerfect Office Professional Edition consists of:

WordPerfect, a program for word processing.
Quattro Pro, a spreadsheet application.
Visual Intelligence, an application that converts spreadsheet data into charts and graphics.
Presentations, a multimedia slideshow application.
Lightning Online, a web-connected digital notebook with an online collaboration feature.

Diehard WordPerfect software users stick with the classic word processing software and its office suite applications for these often cited reasons:

More technically-oriented users prefer Reveal Codes, a tagging function to reformat WordPerfect software's streaming code architecture, via a coding window that can be freely toggled off and on.
WordPerfect's scripting language is easy to learn for those users with software coding skills.
Corel WordPerfect Office Professional Edition is much cheaper than Microsoft's office suite.
For attorneys and paralegals, WordPerfect includes Legal Tools that help format case and pleading documents.
WordPerfect Office easily converts documents into PDF files.
Real Time Preview allows you to see how a format change will look before applying it to a document.

Note that, to purchase Corel WordPerfect upgrades, you must own a licensed version of WordPerfect Office 10 or higher, Microsoft Office 97 or higher, or Microsoft Works Suite 2000 or higher.

Find WordPerfect information in a tutorial that best suits your learning preferences

There are easy step-by-step tutorials freely available for those less technically-oriented users, and there are in-depth WordPerfect tutorials for users who prefer to write code to customize their documents.
Try: The Rutgers University Writing Program and the University of Windsor (Canada) Computer Science Department offer easy, step-by-step, WordPerfect beginner tutorials. The Rutgers tutorial is geared more for users who are graphically oriented, while The University of Illinois's WordPerfect tutorial is aimed at more advanced, computer science students.

If you are an attorney or paralegal, you may want to learn how to use WordPerfect Office Legal Tools

Besides helping to format pleading documents, the Legal Tools also can assist in publishing required document filings to EDGAR (Electronic Data Gathering Analysis and Retrieval), an electronic system supported by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Try: Read Corel's easy-to-learn Legal Tools tutorial. MicroCounsel, a software consulting firm, offers a WordPerfect training and information service for attorneys and paralegals.

Learn more about Corel WordPerfect Office applications along with WordPerfect's specific features

Because you can no longer buy WordPerfect software as a standalone word processing application, it makes sense to learn about WordPerfect's most unique features, as well as the other applications within the office suite.
Try: Download Corel WordPerfect Lightning for free. It's an online note-taking tool that copies text and images from email and the web. Their website also offers a Quickstart Guide for Corel Visual Intelligence (PDF), an Office application that converts spreadsheet data into charts and graphic representations. Also you can download Corel WordPerfect, specifying your use as a small or medium-sized business. There's also a tutorial for converting files into PDF documents and for using WordPerfect's Reveal Codes and Real Time Preview features.

Join a WordPerfect user forum

User forums can be beneficial for WordPerfect users wanting a wide range of opinions, along with more technical information customized to fit your business's needs.
Try: OfficeCommunity.com is Corel's official WordPerfect Office community forum. Corel also offers participatory newsgroups for WordPerfect and the applications that make up the office suite. WordPerfect Universe offers non-Corel-sponsored forums packed with WordPerfect information.

WordPerfect Office features can mimic the interface, keyboard shortcuts, menus, and toolbars of Microsoft Office applications, including Excel.
For some web developers, WordPerfect Office is easier to use than Word especially for HTML, PDF, and XML formats for the web.
There are no PDF conversion tools in Microsoft Word.
Because WordPerfect Office simulates other office applications, it makes sense that you would only need a recent version of Microsoft Office or Microsoft Works to purchase Corel WordPerfect suite upgrades.