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Word Perfect Office 2000, Professional/Academic
by By Jorga Riggenbach, TCS Vice President March 2000 TCS Journal of Tucson Compuer Society www.aztcs.org, scribe@azstar.net - March 18, 2000 at 03:08:29:
Word PerfectOffice 2000 Professional includes WordPerfect 9.0, Dragon NaturallySpeaking, Quattro Pro 9, Coral Central, and Paradox 9. The academic version that I received for review did not contain a user’s manual, although there is help available within the programs. I purchased the WordPerfect Office 2000 Bible by Stephen E. Harris from amazon.com. Weighing in at an amazing 5.25 pounds, this 1360-page behemoth should cover every conceivable subject related to WordPerfect Office 2000.The basic idea behind WordPerfect Office 2000 is a common core of utilities to handle files, editing toolbars, grammar-checking, managing contacts, graphics, and related tasks. In this review, we’ll look at these core applications.
Because speech recognition is an integral part of Word Perfect Office 2000, I will complete this review using the Dragon NaturallySpeaking’s speech recognition program. (And then I’ll go through everything on the keyboard and make lots of corrections. In spite of hours of training, we have not achieved unity.)
Set up
The setup was not as smooth as I would have liked but neither was it particularly difficult. I think I can attribute most of my difficulties to NT (I have NT, Service Pack Five installed, with 96Mb RAM). During my initial installation I received the following error message, “the setup has determined that you are using Windows NT, which currently does not support Microsoft active accessibility. In order to enable Dragon Naturally Speaking for Word PerfectOffice 2000 to read the start menu and Microsoft Office menus, Microsoft active accessibility needs to be installed. If you decide to work without active accessibility, you may not be able to control some Windows applications by voice. This will not affect dictation.”
One of the first things you must do when setting up the WordPerfect Office 2000 Suite is install the Dragon Naturally Speaking software. This software installs separately and a headset is included. The headset from “Parrott” has a battery powered booster on it to enhance the quality of the voice signal. Like any other speech recognition software, it must be trained to your voice. It takes from half-an-hour to an hour to complete this process. Training is somewhat less painful than it could be because you can choose from three reading selections, including a humorous piece by Dave Barry.
Dragon does not train while you are speaking. As you are working on the document you must stop and train specific words or phrases that are incorrect as you dictate. After witnessing the trials and tribulations of other speech recognition software users, I’ve come to the conclusion that Dragon Naturally Speaking is somewhat better and certainly no worse than the other products on the market. Regardless of the enthusiasm of the presenter, speech recognition software is considerably more difficult to use successfully than the manufacturers would like us to believe.
Also note that there are already two Service Packs to download for Office 2000. Service Pack 1 (45,396 KB) and Service Pack 2 (64,621 KB) must be downloaded in order. Even though I have DSL, I haven’t been able to download Service Pack 2 because the darn thing is so slow to download. Service Pack 1 downloaded quickly and easily. There are other patches and additions at http://www.corel.com.
WordPerfect 9
WordPerfect 9 doesn’t look much different from WordPerfect 8. That’s good news, because we are used to working in WordPerfect just the way it is. When you install WordPerfect 9, it does not automatically uninstall WordPerfect 8. In WordPerfect 8 everything was stored in a folder called My Files. I was worried when I installed WordPerfect 9 because I wanted to keep my old files. I backed them up before the installation, but the new installation did not affect my old files. I was also concerned about my address book so I backed it up also. The address book in WordPerfect 9 is handled under the Corel Central application. It was a little more difficult to import because the formats are different but I was able to do it.
WordPerfect 9 uses a folder called Personal with several other folders under it, like My Pictures and My Dictations. Fortunately WordPerfect still offers the Favorites feature in its file search, so it is a simple matter to add your old files to the My Favorites list. That makes it quick and easy to move around in your files using your old file structure.
I’m a WordPerfect fan from way back, so there is a lot I like about WP. Of course, all the format-as-you-go features are there like Instant Sentence Corrections. These features can be turned on and off as you need them. Make It Fit is another fun feature (Format/Make It Fit) that will automatically fit your text to the number of pages you specify. In WordPerfect 9 you can also size a block of text to fit.
They’ve jazzed up drop caps (format/paragraph/drop cap) and QuickStyle is there so you can save your brilliant layout for future publications. QuickFormat claims to be even quicker than QuickStyle.
Tables are another nice WordPerfect feature, and they are fast and easy to create. Of course, there are QuickFormatting and SpeedFormatting to bring you up to light speed.
Envelopes have some new features, although it wouldn’t work at all until I downloaded Service Pack 1. Now that it is working, I can tell you that WordPerfect produces an envelope page at the end of your document that can be formatted and printed.
A feature I especially appreciate in WordPerfect is timed backups (tools/settings/files). You can specify an interval and WordPerfect will automatically back up your file. I have mine set to back up every five minutes. That might seem excessive, but it works for me. WordPerfect Office 2000 also includes a third party Windows Systems Tools for larger back-ups.
Of course, if you are a writer, the editing and reviewing procedures are near and dear to your heart. There are the little things like the mouse selection tricks (to select a single word in a WordPerfect document, double-click the word, or to select a sentence, triple-click the sentence or click once in the left margin. And finally, my favorite—to select a paragraph, quadruple-click or hit shift+click from the shadow cursor to the cursor. Cool, huh?)
Find and Replace (Edit/Find and Replace) gets plenty of use in this neck of the woods. I use it to clean up e-mail documents and take out those hard returns that can totally mess up the formatting on something you get off the net or by e-mail. You can match codes (Edit/Find and Replace/Match/Codes) words, fonts and punctuation. It is so nice to be able to remove all those “>>>>>>” greater-thans from a cluttered e-mail message.
There are lots of features for reviewing documents so that the process can be done by one or many. For example, there is an Author Review Mode where you can accept or reject revisions. You can add comments and hide the comments.
The tool and property bars can be customized to meet your needs and I particularly like the feature that checks your spelling as you go. If you misspell a word, it is instantly underlined in red and a prompt-as-you-go display offers suggestions for correct spellings. Of course, when you are finished you can run Spell Checker and Grammatik. And the Thesaurus (Tools/Thesaurus, or Alt+F1) has a fancy new display with tabs for Grammatik and Spell Checker.
The Big Picture—Importing Microsoft Word 97 Files to WordPerfect 9 and exporting WordPerfect 9 files to Microsoft Word 97 has received attention in WordPerfect Office 2000. Overall, the emphasis is on pulling a suite of products together to compete with the other giants out there. Corel deserves a ton of credit for the incredible organization and effort they’ve put in to pull everything together.
Corel has also been pushing the Corel Linux operating system (released November 15, 1999). They’ve maintained their focus on areas of specialization with business applications like WordPerfect Law Office 2000 (released December 20, 1999). It is a legal-specific office suite with the latest technology from all of Corel’s previous legal suite partners, as well as Deal Proof SE.
Corel also has country-specific products and I suspect WordPerfect Office 2000 may have a considerably wider customer base and appeal outside the U.S. than they do here.
Overall Opinion—I have to tell you that I am a died-in-the-wool WordPerfect afficionado. Okay, I’ll quit beating around the bush—I love WordPerfect. I’ve loved it since its blue screen/complex template days. I’d be hard pressed to find anything wrong with WordPerfect. Oh sure, I hate the clunky zoom feature. You must click on the Zoom icon and then choose a setting up to 200% and write it in if you want to go up to 400%. When you are finished, you must go back to the icon and reverse the process.
And I think WP is having growing pains. It has gotten huge and it can do so much, but sometimes it feels like there needs to be a step up to a text layout program. Ventura used to be Corel’s answer to the problem, but nobody in this part of the country uses Ventura any more.
All the goodies that we expect from WordPerfect are still there—from the ability to assemble multi-part documents to mass-producing with labels and merge. Templates, projects, and styles are still there to vex and fascinate us, and the whole range of helpful features from indexing, table of contents, sorting, book-marking, page formatting, headers and footers, and on down the impressive list of possibilities.
I love the upgrade for WordPerfect. Once I downloaded the first Service Pack, things settled down nicely, and it seems more stable than WordPerfect 8. Reveal Codes are still there for those complex, structured documents or for simple corrections. (Mozelle Johnson, of MS Word fame, claims Word has a feature that works in a similar manner. Harumph. Similar? Maybe, but still a weak imitation.) I like the addition of Dragon, but with my NT limitations I haven’t seen it as a wildly useful addition. The other components of the suite of products range in usefulness and I’ll discuss them briefly.
Quattro Pro 9
Quattro Pro 9 is a spreadsheet program and you can import/export Excel 97 files. You can change your compatibility setting to specific file types and menus. It offers one million rows (does anybody actually use one million rows?). It has cool dynamic cross tabs reports.
The Quattro Pro 9 screen looks the same as it always did, and it has the input line which displays the current cell’s address and contents. The notebook window has tabs at the bottom for each related spreadsheet. Notebooks are each stored in a file with a .QPW extension but you can still open your earlier WB1, WB2 or WB3 files. Quattro Pro 9 has PerfectExpert Help, a wizard-type interface, and there are more than 100 preformatted notebook templates in a huge variety of categories. These are already set up to receive your data.
So, Quattro Pro 9 is there in WordPerfect Office 2000 to track and compute numerical information or financial data for a wide range of uses from home to work.
Paradox
I purchased a separate book for Paradox—Paradox 9, Power Programming, The Official Guide, by Mike A. Prestwood. Osborne/ McGraw-Hill publisher.
I won’t pretend that I have even remotely mastered Paradox. I can tell you that it is a database program. The idea is to be able to enter data and then be able to easily browse through the information and ask questions about your data. Basically, you want to create and view data as a table, form, or report and you want to be able to pull this information together as a cohesive report. Paradox offers a range for easy database access to complex access. (This is the sort of thing that makes me wish I’d gotten off my behind and attended all of Jack Crawford’s Access SIG meetings. The basics seem similar.)
As I understand it, the difference between using Quattro Pro 9 or a WordPerfect table is a matter of size and complexity. These are called flat-file databases and they are fine for small amounts of information.
A larger, relational database lets you update, organize, and look at lots of information. Relational databases work as a one-to-one, one-to-many or many-to-many, so proper planning at the initial stages of setting up a database are critical.
Also, you must master the Paradox interface which involves working with objects. The technical term “objects” covers just about everything from any database component that displays, presents, stores etc. Then you are off to the mysterious land of tables, forms, queries, reports, and other objects.
Luckily for the database-challenged like me, WordPerfect Office 2000 Paradox 9 offers a number of ready-to-use project templates, Paradox Experts wizards, and a Tutorial. I tested my skills on a template called Music Collection to organize my limited, but wildly diverse, collection of CDs. I’d give it a thumbs up. Now, if I could actually find all my CDs when I want them, things would be peachy.
Corel Presentations 9
Corel Presentations 9 is simple and easy to use. I created a presentation for the Computer Basics Workshop. Unfortunately, the file I saved as a PowerPoint file (PowerPoint is what we have on the TCS headquarters computer) did not work as advertised. PowerPoint 97 refused to recognize the file.
The only PowerPoint option that Presentations offered was to save as a PowerPoint 95 file, in spite of the fact that the WordPerfect Office 2000 box says that it will save as a PowerPoint 97 file. I haven’t had time to investigate this thoroughly, but perhaps when I’m finally able to download the elusive Service Pack 2, there will be a change.
Trellix Web Publishing 2.1
This program is for publishing WordPerfect documents directly to the web without having to learn html. There are plenty of templates to get you started and the program is supposed to be compatible with MS FrontPage, HoTmetal PRO and other web site management programs.
Trellix is a relative newcomer to this burgeoning field. It was developed by Dan Bricklin, who was the co-developer of the first spreadsheet. Bricklin separated out from the herd and headed in an interesting direction. Instead of dedicating Trellix to graphical gymnastics, his focus is on straightforward methods of putting information on the Internet. To that end, importing WordPerfect documents is a rather pleasantly painless process. This is of real interest to me since I literally have books written in WordPerfect and I’ve often wanted to put up a cha.
I’ve been happily using Corel WebMaster Suite for several years and Trellix should fit in nicely.
CorelCENTRAL 9
In addition to Dragon NaturallySpeaking, CorelCENTRAL 9 is probably one of the most ambitious and updated additions to WordPerfect Office 2000. It integrates the address book with to-do lists, calendars, memos, and alarms.
CorelCENTRAL 9 is a Personal Information Manager with some real muscle. Now you can manage addresses, card files and memos, schedules and day-to-day minutiae. And you synchronize all this with your Palm Pilot. Of course, the first thing is bringing your old address book across, but that is relatively obvious and easy. Some other neat features: you can publish an address book to html, so you can put up a company or organization directory on the web. There are Card Files (remember the Card File from Windows 3.1? Well, this looks nothing like that.) To keep track of everything from recipes to customer contacts. It even has a card file mini-application.
Memos are to remind you of various upcoming events. All the features are tied together to create a very handy organizational tool. Best of all, the address book is much more robust than it has been in the past. I always used and liked the address book in the past, but it was a delicate little flower that became balky at the slightest insult.
Wrapping It Up
WordPerfect Office 2000 is an impressive, wide-ranging collection of powerful software. I look forward to learning some new skills with Paradox and Trellix and enhancing my knowledge of Quattro Pro and Dragon NaturallySpeaking. And I just plain enjoy working in WordPerfect.
Overall, I would certainly recommend CorelCENTRAL 9 as an upgrade or for the new user. Corel has done a fabulous job putting WordPerfect Office 2000 together and they offer good on-line support at http://www.corel.com.
And let me offer a quick word about DAD (Desktop Application Director). DAD will live on your task bar, along with a string of applications, when you install WordPerfect Office 2000. (No more naked, empty task bars for you.) A right-click will bring up a menu of all the associated Corel programs. DAD can be easily closed down when you are installing software, etc. Your DAD display can also be easily customized with a right-click on the task bar and a trip to Properties.
System Requirements—With Dragon NaturallySpeaking Installed Windows 95, 98, or NT 4.0 Minimum 133 MHz Pentium processor IBM compatible PC 48 Mb RAM for Win95 and Win98, 64 for NT 220 Mb of hard disk space (330 Mb typical installation) CD-ROM drive, VGA monitor, and mouse or tablet. 16-bit sound card (Sound Blaster 16 quality or better).
Cost—The cost varies. If you qualify for Academic Software prices, WordPerfect Office 2000 Professional will probably be less expensive than a commercial version. (Check with Corel for details.) The price from amazon.com for WordPerfect Office 2000 Professional is $349.99. My advice would be to check with Costco and look around for the product that best matches your need. You may only want to upgrade WordPerfect or you may be more interested in the Corel WordPerfect Family Pack.
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