WordPerfect Is Not Dead
by Heather Cline Hoganson, Staff Counsel at the
Office of Administrative Hearings and Chair of SLUG

There are many closely held beliefs that, when questioned or disparaged, can cause huge fights, even wars: Religion... Politics... Which is the better word processor -- Word or WordPerfect?

Many law office consultants advocate being "word processor ambidextrous." This means having both programs and letting staff use what works best for them and their project (for instance, if a client has a particular need). It's a nice thought, but many offices don't consider it a viable option due to licensing costs, program costs, IT staff power, etc. So, most offices just have one word processor, like it or not.

While the office I work for switched (for business reasons) to Word years ago, and I've gotten used to Word, I was just as enthralled as any die-hard WordPerfect user to hear Corel representative Robert Craft at the February SLUG meeting. Much of his insight was not product-specific but applicable to offices in general.

Among other statistics, Craft mentioned that the average percentage of features used in a word processing program by a typical user was about five percent. Are you more tech than that? Well, "power users" took advantage of between 10-12 percent of a program's features. The lesson there is that upgrading might not be your answer -- training on using more features of your current product might be more efficient. Another startling statistic -- a user will spend about 70 percent of word processing time formatting a document rather than outright composing it. Think about how much time you spend centering, bolding, changing margins or fonts to fit your document specifications, etc. Startling, isn't it?

More generally applicable words of wisdom: Check for updates often. A change in a driver or .dll in one program can affect others, requiring those programs to release service packs or updates, and the cycle goes on. Updating to the latest version of Internet Explorer, for example, can alter the Windows operating system, creating new issues for your other programs written for Windows "as it used to be." Buying a new program from the store today? Well, that program may have been on the shelf for months and in internet time that's eons ago. It's usually very easy to check a product's web page for patches, service packs, service releases, updates, or similar term de jour.

And now for new stuff on the WordPerfect front. There are two new editions of WordPerfect from which to choose. The Standard edition includes WordPerfect, Quattro Pro, Presentations, and Corel Central (a personal information manager). The Professional edition includes the standards plus Paradox and Dragon Naturally Speaking 5. If you are looking into voice recognition, then go with the Professional version.

WordPerfect 2002 (also known as version 10) now includes the ability to create PDF files (Portable Document Format -- the ones you can read with the free Adobe reader) and allows for watermarks and hyperlinks within those pdfs. This may come in handy for e-filing!

Sub-documents can be handled in WordPerfect, even if some of the "chapters" are not in WordPerfect. If a number of individuals are working on a brief, or parts of a contract, the use of sub-documents can keep everyone's piece in order.

One of my favorite features is called "real-time preview." This allows me to preview a formatting change before I actually apply it. So I can select a paragraph, pull down my font list, and my paragraph will show me how the whole thing would look in Arial, Helvetica, Comic Sans, Times, or even a font called Heather. If I like the look I can keep it. If not, I haven't actually changed the document yet.

What's stayed the same in WordPerfect? Well, we'll always have reveal codes, giving the user pinpoint control. Those die-hards who used the DOS keyboard settings can still keep them with the upgraded versions, saving time on the learning curve and also reducing the delay caused by frequently reaching for the mouse. Customizable toolbars still allow for the creation of specialized functions, such as legal toolbars (including, for example, a table of authorities button).

Plus, the file format of WordPerfect has not changed since version 6, so forward and backward compatibility is no problem. In fact, Craft mentioned that many offices have used WordPerfect to convert Word 2000 documents to Word 97 formats, because some Word users with older versions could not read the newer product formats.

WordPerfect is alive and kicking.

Congratulations to James Sandison and Bret Rossi, who won free copies of WordPerfect 2002 at the SLUG meeting.

SLUG is a section of the Sacramento County Bar Association and is affiliated with the Sacramento PC Users Group. All interested in legal technology are invited to attend SLUG's monthly meetings and to join the SLUG listerv. To find out about future meetings, contact Mike Cable at 381-7868 or by E-mail: mcable@portercablelaw.com. To find out about subscribing to the SLUG Listserv, see the SLUG web page at http://www.sacbar.org/slug.html.