Important Differences Between WordPerfect and MS Word that I've Discovered the past two Weeks . . .

Just some brief observations I've gleaned whilst programming my Merge Project into MS Word the past few days. I'm much more conversant with Corel's Wordperfect. I've been using Wordperfect since before Corel bought the Utah-based company about 10 years ago and folded it into their programming line -- since about Wordperfect 3.1, many, many iterations ago. So everything I'm learning about Word on the fly is a new revelation, which I'm contrasting with my knowledge of Wordperfect. And since I own the latest versions of both programs (Wordperfect 12 and Word 2003), I'm fairly well conversant with the latest features of both programs -- To Wit;

1.) Wordperfect allows you to reset margins and page orientation at any point in the document -- Word does not. If I want a multi-page document that has the odd pages Portrait formatted and the even pages Landscape format, you can do it in Wordperfect by resetting the Page Setup every page. In Word, you select the page orientation one time and it never changes -- unless you change it for ALL the pages in the document. Same with the margins, as Wordperfect allows you to change margins as often as you want.

2.) Word is much more simple and accurate to use a Scanner with. I suspect it's because of the above -- I've scanned similar documents into both WordPerfect and Word, and the results in Wordperfect are not only slow but usually result in so many bizarre variations or margin formats that they're almost unusable. I usually end up cutting and pasting the (badly mangled) text into a new sheet with clean margins, where I can start cleaning up the text errors.

Word, on the other hand, has NEVER given me a text error -- probably because the processor wasn't overloaded trying to figure out the bizarre margins.

3.) Word only allows importing pictures with simple re-sizing; WordPerfect allows multiple picture edit functions. In fact, the picture edit functions are so multi-faceted that they can frequently overwhelm the processor and slow the program to the point of standstill unless you have the latest version of whatever Pentium chip Intel's marketing now. Word forgoes the editing functions for simple re-sizing, which is plenty for most folks. The only time I needed the complex picture editing functions was when I did my Thesis five years ago -- and it was maddening waiting for the processor to catch up to what I'd just done.

4.) Word allows easy and simple import of MS Excel documents as cut-and-paste into Word. Wordperfect also has some or most of this function with Corel's Quattro, it's not nearly as easy or neat in execution.

5.) Imported Quattro documents can be edited easily in WordPerfect documents. In fact, all (if not most) Quattro functions are available even if the document has been cut and pasted into Wordperfect. However, Excel documents imported into Word have very limited editing capability -- mostly just re-sizing capabilities and pasting text in. This is some kind of Microsoft thing -- as I've pasted Excel documents into Wordperfect before and couldn't edit them worth a damn.

6.) WordPerfect is easily the cost-beater here by far. This one makes no sense to me; you'd think the program with the most function (WordPerfect) would cost more, but the opposite is true. WordPerfect is about $25.00 per copy cheaper than Word; and is easily only half the cost when you buy it bundled into your new computer purchase; which means lots of businesses buy it for their staffs. Yet Word is the program most people know, because it's given free to libraries, schools, univerities, and other educational and public service institutions.

So which do I prefer? Well, for standard run-of-the-mill word processing MS Word is substantially easier to use, and the word processor of choice at my work. But for big jobs, WordPerfect can't be beat in a pinch for price, utility, and function.

Just have a lot of time to do it in, or a big honkin' processor.

~~JD~~