Customer Reviews

WordPerfect Office X4 Home & Student

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

word perfect is an excellent word processor that many including myself consider superior, more powerful and easy to use than Word. However the "Home and Student" version is sold without any notice that it does not include all the features that are advertised. True there is a Acrobat file hidden at the WP website that compares the versions but if you don't happen to see that you will find that you have bought a program that will NOT open .pdf files, will not save .pdf files, does not save in the latest Word format. There are probably other "missing" features as well. It doesn't say that anywhere on the box and in fact as you install the program you are told about all the features the new program has- which IN FACT it does not have! For those who purchase the program with the new features in mind you can call the company about it and they will tell you to get lost. This is unworthy of the reputation Word perfect has for those like me who have used the program since its earliest DOS incarnations.

It is hard to believe it is two years since Corel released X3. When I found out that the new X4 version had been released, I downloaded the one month demo from Corel.

I don't have much use for anything in the suite except WordPerfect. I've been using WordPerfect since before Windows, when it had a blue screen, displayed ASCII characters in Courier font (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 word processing in most offices I've worked in because, in my opinion, it is the better product for the job. 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!

Universal File Support -- Limited PDF support in Home/Student Edition

WordPerfect has very good compatibility with other file formats making it nearly universal. The more expensive version of WordPerfect handles PDF files and will import text and graphic based PDF files and will perform optical character recognition on the PDF file. As the comment below shows, Corel indicates this version does not open PDF files, although it will publish to PDF. Please see http://www.corel.com/content/pdf/wpx4/edition-comparison-chart.pdf for a comparison of the different versions.

Although it is not perfect, WordPerfect converts to and from numerous Word formats including RTF, and all versions through 7. It also supports other formats including WordStar, AMI, OfficeWriter, Lotus, Multimate and numerous others.

Skins

Corel also added two themes so that the skin looks more like XP/Vista, and for those who need it, the Word Count feature is on the application bar at the bottom of the WordPerfect window. This new version appears to be very stable.

Exceptional Word Processing Capabilities

When WordPerfect came out, it took over the market. (It was far superior to the software then available, and remains one of the best.) When MicroSoft came out with Word, I had the feeling they did everything they could to make it different from WordPerfect just to use their power in the industry to take over the word processing market, just like MicroSoft did with every other good software idea to come along. (e.g., Mozilla/Netscape, Norton Utilities.)

I have three versions of Word (2000, 2003 and 2007) and WordPerfect 5, 7, 8, 10, 12, X3 and now X4. I use the MicroSoft product only when absolutely necessary -- usually because someone else sends me a document in that format. The new version of Word is extremely powerful. It is just that like most M/S software, it does too much and takes the control away from the user. It is also unfamiliar to me because the traditional pull down menus have been placed sideways on toolbars and rearranged so it is uncomfortable to use. Accordingly, I prefer to use WordPerfect and save the output as a Word document using the "SAVE AS" feature on the "file" pull down menu.

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. If you want to change one paragraph, you can do it with a single keystroke (the WordPerfect 6 keystrokes are F4 for left indent or Shift-F4 for double indent).

In addition, you can get to the formatting codes. Hit Alt-F3 and the screen splits in half and displays all of the format 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. WordPerfect can then save the document in Word/RTF format with the problems fixed. This is particularly useful when combined with the global search and replace. For example, you can search and replace all [paragraph style] codes and end up with a manageable document.

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. 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 column change or page change seems to introduce a whole new set of 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.

Another very important feature is the ability to view a document from the "open document" screen without having to actually open up the document. This way, if you are searching for a specific document or a document containing certain specific information or "language" you need, you don't have to serially open a document, close it, open another document, and so on until you find the one you want. This is particularly powerful when combined with the "find document" feature on the "open document" screen. Using the find button opens a screen which is similar to the windows "search" screen. You can type in a series of words, and WordPerfect will search all files on the hard drive or in the folder/subfolders in which you are working for all documents containing your target search terms. You can then scroll through and look at each document to quickly determine their contents. From the "find" screen, you can access the "quickfinder" program which pre-scans folders on the computer so that searching for documents is nearly instantaneous. For example, once I needed to find a "Declaration re Ex Parte Notice" to use as a template from among thousands of documents. The entire search took perhaps half a minute.

The most prominent change between WP 10 and 12/X3/X4 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 and upgraded 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!

One of the great advantages of WordPerfect is that the files are much smaller than Word documents. This means you can transport them on floppy drives.

As a final thought, Word is very powerful and works very well for short documents such as business letters. If you do anything over several pages, you are much better off with WordPerfect.

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

Other Programs:

The Corel Office package includes replacement programs for most of the stuff in Microsoft Office. The suite includes a Microsoft Outlook replacement (Mail), a PowerPoint replacement (Presentation), an exceptional spreadsheet program (Quattro) and Lightning. I haven't yet figured out what Lightning does except act as a notebook of some sort.

I agree with the other reviewer who said this is not as advertised. I talked my husband into letting me spend the money based in large part on the fact that this product can open and create PDF files, as clearly stated in the product description.
Why have that text on the page for this product if it only applies to a completely different (and more expensive) version?
I am now stuck with a product that will not do what I thought it would when I made my buying decision.
I disappointed with Corel in particular, and even with Amazon a little. Open Office is free and supports Microsoft Office, Corel Wordperfect, AND PDF files. I guess I will just learn to use it.

My wife and I have 4 computers at 2 addresses. We have exclusively used WordPerfect as a word processor for over 20 years. In the last year the different flavors of the software we have loaded became corrupted and very erratic. So we did some research and decided to try WordPerfect Home & Student Office X4 after trying Open Office and finding it did not do all the graphics and margin manipulation my wife does as a minister who creates her own church materials.

The package came in a very large, highly illustrated (Big Store) box measuring 9 1/2 inches long, 8 inches wide and nearly 2 inches thick. Inside there was another cardboard box for rigidity, but then only an install CD, a fonts/photos/gimmicks CD, a Training Video CD and a single sheet "freebie"ad for Stamps,com. In short, there was this huge box for just 3 CDs in white envelopes.

THERE WAS NO DOCUMENTATION OF ANY KIND save for fine print systems requirements on the outside box. There was no offer of support or a listing anywhere of an email address or telephone number to go to with questions about installing the suite with prior editions of WP already on your computer. Put in another way, the only guidance in the whole package was an instruction to "Put disk #1 in your CD-ROM drive." In much bigger letters on the outside of the package was a warning: "INSTALL ON UP TO 3 COMPUTERS." This was a big surprise as we have 4 computers and if the sales info on the Internet had mentioned a limited license we never would have bought it. We also would not have bought it if we knew the company would not show respect to their user base.

We still think WordPerfect features are the best on the market but also think it is very sad to find that Corel Corporation does an even worse job than Microsoft in respecting and being responsive to the reasonable needs of their customers.

I recently purchased Wordperfect X4, hoping they had resolved a program bug I experienced with X3, but there is still a problem: when cutting and pasting a block of text from one wordperfect file to another (I am working on a book) if I don't immediately save the file the text will often simply disappear if I move the cursor to another position for further editing. Sometimes I can get it back by clicking on the "forward" arrow, but other times it is simply gone... I also tried going back to Wordperfect 12, but it does the same thing. I have no idea why, and I also have no idea how much text I have lost over the years; I have been using Wordperfect since before version 5. The worst thing may be that Corel won't even accept an email from me regarding the issue, because apparently buying the Home and student edition (I am a teacher) disqualifies me from accessing their resources to any extent whatsoever, including contacting them about a legitimate problem. I suppose this is their payback for allowing me to save a little on the purchase price.

I have used Wordperfect over these many years because I find it much easier to format than MS Word, and much easier to fix formatting problems thanks to their "Reveal Codes" feature.

The bottom line? I wish there was one. I wish there was a third-party replacement for wordperfect... one that works without bugs, or at least from a more responsive/engaging company.

All of the other alternative word processing programs out there emulate MS Word, as far as I know, which I don't find very user-friendly, as compared to Wordperfect. But the above-mentioned problems are real and cause me a great deal of concern.

I've used WordPerfect for many years, starting with WP5.1 and have been very pleased with the features of this fine product. When I was eventually forced to switch from Windows XP to a Vista operating system I was disappointed to find my WordPerfect 12 would not install on the new computer. I decided to try WordPerfect Office X4 and I'm glad I did. WP X4 proved to be compatible with Vista and it installed easily. WP X4 had all the features and screens I with which I was familiar and some new features as well. The most interesting, and useful one, is the document manager feature which allows a document to be composed in WP, MS Word, or PDF formats. This is useful when creating a document that must be emailed to someone who does not have WordPerfect. Since WP X4 is backward compatible with previous versions, all my old .wpd documents are readable with this new version of WordPerfect. I am delighted with this software and I highly recommend it. It comes with a 3-user license making it attractive to those who have more than one computer in their household.

I purchased this product and it seemingly was registered and loaded properly. It failed completely after a short use and I attempted to reload if from the disks supplied only to be stopped at 6% configuration. When reattempted, the product declared my i.d. number invalid, a defect confirmed by Corel on its website. I waited and tried again, successfully registering the product only to reach the same problem, stopping this time at 7% of the product configuring. The product and a completely inaccessable (by telephone) Corel stink.

The WordPerfect X4 loaded fast and easily. It works great with previous wpd files. I did have a problem with one installation on a Vista machine with Office 2007. If Outlook 2007 was opened before WordPerfect was opened, when the last WP document was closed (and a blank document opens), the package would crash and close. No ptoblem if we always kept one document open, or if we opened WordPerfect first.

I have used WordPerfect in all its permutations since it came on 5 1/4" disks and had a blank blue screen. The lastest version continues the ease of use and power that I expect. The parts that are missing from the "professional" version are not really important for my needs and the price more than makes up for it.

Because I have to match with other people, I also use Word 2007, but WordPerfect continues to be the better product. Whenever I can, I use it instead of Word.

I bought a new laptop for my writing and wanted to use WordPerfect--I really don't like Word. I'd heard only horror stories about programs not working with Vista, but I had no trouble installing Word Perfect X4 and was able to start using it right away. There are some interesting new features I'm going to enjoy exploring, but all my old favorites are still there: view codes, spelling options in a little box at the top of the screen (not at the curser--drives me mad with Word), uncluttered screen. Fantastic. Highly recommended.