Customer Reviews

Corel WordPerfect Office 12 Standard [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

Having now had WordPerfect 12 installed for some time, I can say that Corel has done well in their target area of improving compatibility with MS Office. There really isn't much else new about this version, but improving WP's ability to co-exist with MS Office may be what is needed to keep this once-great suite going.
Why consider WP12 if you're looking for an alternative to MS Office? Put simply, StarOffice/OpenOffice just isn't ready yet. Every part of the WordPerfect suite is more polished, more powerful and more flexible than the equivalent component in SO/OOo. Of course WP12 has Reveal Codes, which neither SO/OOo nor MS Office has, but even in features that they have in common, like Publish-to-PDF, WP's version is more professional than the SO/OOo equivalent.
QuattroPro sometimes gets a bad rap, but it is a very powerful spreadsheet, with its own Pivot Tables (the equivalent of Excel's CrossTabs), and it offers 1 million rows and 18,000 columns, far more than ANY of its competitors.
Paradox is the sort of database app that makes its MS Office "equivalent" look like a child's toy, if you are prepared for the steeper learning curve.
Of course the heart of the suite is the incomparable WordPerfect itself, and version 12 is not an embarrassment to its predecessors. Even though the only major improvements have been to compatibility with MS Office (significantly better in WP, QP and Presentations), there have been some other useful bug fixes and refinements.

The really exciting thing about this release is the evidence that Corel (now owned by Vector, and in a much healthier financial situation than it has been for years) has renewed its commitment to the suite, and is being realistic about what is needed to protect WP's niche in the market. Planning for version 13 is apparently already under way, as is a trial of a version for Linux, so WordPerfect is definitely here to stay for the foreseeable future.
Having used both OpenOffice and StarOffice for over a year now, I can honestly say that, if you are looking for an enterprise-quality, professional business suite alternative to MS Office, WP12 is a much better choice. The quality difference is especially noticeable in the respective spreadsheet applications, with QuattroPro being several orders of magnitude more powerful and useful than Calc.
In summary, if, for any reason, you want an alternative to MS Office, WP12 is it. Sure, it's not free, but the competitive pricing structure for upgrades make it a very economical choice, and the quality of the product is such that the cost is money VERY well spent. WORDPERFECT LIVES!

I don't have much use for anything in the suite except WordPerfect. I've been using WordPerfect since before Windows, when, if you were lucky enough to afford a 4 color screen, the word processor could display a blue or a green background, displayed ASCII characters, there were no fonts except Courier, and laser printers cost a small fortune. I work for a number of attorneys -- WordPerfect is the software of choice for wordprocessing in most offices I've worked in because, in my opinion, it is the better product for the job. It has many features specifically designed for law office use incuding the pleading macro, a toolbar for legal work, and tables of authorities and table of contents designed for legal documents. It may also be because WordPerfect has been around for so long that everyone just migrated without changing. If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

When WordPerfect came out, it took over the market. When MicroSoft came out with Word, I had the feeling they did everything they could to make it different from WordPerfect just to use its power in the industry to take over the wordprocessing market, just like MicroSoft did with every other good software idea to come along. (e.g., Mozilla/Netscape, Norton Utilities.) I hate Microsoft's stupid animated paperclip -- it makes me feel like a 7 year old. "It looks like your writing a letter ..." Go away! It was amusing to watch it roll itself up and spit itself through some imaginary pinch rollers when you print a document, but only once. By the fourth time that stupid paperclip reared its animated eyeballs and interfered with my workflow, I wanted to tell MicroSoft to wrap that annoying the paperclip around their cable modems!! I'm an adult!

I have two versions of Word and WordPerfect 5, 7, 8, 10 and 12. (I just threw out 5.2 for Windows and 7 when I moved.) I use the MicroSoft product only when absolutely necessary -- usually because someone else needs the document in that format.

In my experience, Word does one thing better than WordPerfect -- and it is a biggie -- it works with HTML documents better than the Corel WordPerfect. With Word, you can copy an entire page from the Web and paste it directly into Word and it will pull most of the pictures from the Web. WordPerfect does not go and get the pictures. HEAR THAT COREL!?! However, I don't often copy entire web pages into my documents.

The reason I like WordPerfect so much is that it types more like a typewriter. You can set up and use styles if you want, but you can also just hit the tab button to indent the first line of a paragraph. If you want to change the margins for the entire document, you simply change the margins. The rest of the document follows the change. You don't have to change each paragraph.

In addition, you can get to the formatting codes. Hit Alt-F3 and the screen splits in half and displays all of the formatting codes -- bold, underline, tabs, indent codes, line spacing, column on and off, etc. Then you know exactly what you have done and fix and format it easily. This ability has proven useful on several occasions when clients, who insist on using Word for legal documents, cannot cajole Word to put their unruly documents into the format they want. (This is particularly true when using OCR with scanned or faxed documents.) By opening the Word document in WordPerfect, I have been able to use "Alt-F3" to identify the errant codes and quickly repair them. The ability to easily replace formatting codes becomes extremely powerful when combined with global search and replace commands. WordPerfect can then save the document in Word/RTF format with the problems fixed.

Working with columns is also easier. You turn on columns and tell it how many colums you want, set the width of each, and the space between them, and away you go. You have four types of columns to work with -- newspaper, balanced newspaper, parallel and parallel with block protect. It handles columns much better. I've tried the other software, and if you change text or printers, you can never get the columns to line up the way you want it. With Word, each colum change or page change seems to introduce new control codes, and a complete set of formatting, and you can never get it back the way you want it. I once tried to scan in a list of names and addresses which were in two or three columns into Word. Each name and address was placed in its own text box. I could never work with it.

The most prominent change between WP 10 and 12 is the workspace manager which allows you to switch between legal mode, original (classic) WordPerfect 5.1 mode (with the blue screen), legal mode, standard WordPerfect for Windows mode and Word mode. They have also included the ability to publish to Adobe PDF, HTML, and RTF/Word formats.

This is full featured software, and does everything I need. It handles tables, tables of content, tables of authorities, column sorts -- everything I need in a law office. Graphics can be dropped in with a click of the mouse. I'm considered to be almost an expert, and there is a lot I don't know!

Take time to get to know the software and you'll be glad you purchased it.

First off I don't own a business or anything I am just a poor student that needed an office program for school. After using Word and MS Office I needed to upgrade (this gets expensive year after year). So I decided to try Corel Office. It does pretty much everything Word, Excel, ect... does. And you can publish to PDF which is a bonus. Its a great alternative to MS and is a good value for the money.

So, the "whole world" used Microsoft Office. Why should you buy this if it is just the same thing? First, I am pretty sure this is a bit cheaper than microsoft. Second, you can save any Corel file into office format to be compatible with the world. Third, Corel customer support is much more friendly. Finally, The corel software package is far superior. Specifically . . .

Wordperfect: The word processor that is far superior to MS Word or any other that I have used. If you do nothing but type plain text, anything will work for you, even wordpad. However, as soon as you want to FORMAT with columns, tables, graphics, special characters, or anything fancy, WORDPERFECT is the best. You can type alt-F3 within the program to "reveal codes." This makes it so that you can see exactly what the program is doing. I "fluent" in literally dozens of different word processors and nothing gives you the power and control of wordperfect. I can get the job done with anything, but wordperfect saves me tons of time, and makes my life so much easier.

Quatro Pro: A spreadsheet program similar to microsoft excel. I do prefer this program over excel, but honestly I don't find it any better than excel. One advantage over excel is everybody else is using it.

Presentations: Similar to Mirosoft Powerpoint. This is another superior program. It can open powerpoint files. The huge advantage is the ease of use and the power to create great presentations in a little time. Often a program like this is something on your laptop, in which case, it doesn't matter if you have Powerpoint or not. If you create you presentations at home and present them on another computer, Presentations will save things in powerpoint format. You can download a free powerpoint viewer to make sure the conversion really worked. Every conversion I have ever done worked perfectly.

Conclusion, the corel suit is a better program. The program is faster, more efficient, more user friendly, makes smaller file sizes, and overall causes less stress. My advice: buy it!

I bought this Word Perfect because I am tired of being a slave to Microsoft Products. We own a business and are forced to buy their operating system for our numerous computers. It adds up ... Microsoft Office is also very expensive though we have it installed on one system.

After using Word Perfect 12, I realize we no longer need MS Word. This works much better and is fully compatible with our old MS word files.

We are elated that we took a chance on Word Perfect!

A GREAT PROGRAM AT A SUPER PRICE!

WordPerfect is more intuitively user-friendly than MS Word, and really grows on you as you realize this. Example #1: the "Reveal Codes" View option, which you'll love if you ever have trouble figuring out a formatting complexity. Example #2: Menu items are laid out logically - such as page formatting, which is listed under the "Format" menu, not the "File" menu! Example #3: the User Agreement gives you more leeway on how you use the program. There are more examples, but the best advice I can give is to try it - it's a real bargain.

I'm a die-hard WordPerfect user, so consider the source!

That said, one important note not present in Amazon's info: WPO 12 also works in Windows 98 SE ... try that with MSO later versions!

Several fixes have been observed (compared to WPO 11), including (and important to me) that using Wp's Publish to PDF again saves multiple colored text on the same line correctly again (it worked OK in Wp10).

Great product, particularly for those wanting improved round-tripping with MS Word files, opening or saving as.

WordPerfect 12 is better than Office in that it is far more user friendly, has more features and is faster and less likely to crash. You can also use WordPerfect on most operating systems, which you cannot do with MS Office. People ask, why use Corel when you can just use Office? The answer is that it is better in every single way than Office, and if you don't believe it, try it yourself.

I have used this program for years and love its WYSWYG approach. Now I use WP 11. Word is also a very good program but fails to add the essectial Reveal Codes, which I cannot do without. Why Word will not or cannot add RC is beyond me. Obviousley it is not that easy or they would have done so by now.

I like all the new features, especially being able to convert Word For Windows files and other formats.