Software Review of:
WordPerfect 
Office 2000 Suite 

First and foremost, reveal codes are still with us as an integral part of using WordPerfect 9. I have absolutely no idea of how MS Word users get by without seeing the formatting codes that can make lines/words/columns, etc. misbehave on the page. A very pleasant surprise: for the first time, we have the ability to open a Word document in WordPerfect without any glitches whatsoever, and without having to save it as a WordPerfect 5.0 document or as a RichText document first. Furthermore, you can open file formats created in earlier versions: 6, 6.1, 7 and 8 in WP9 without a problem. But, I’m getting ahead of myself. 

The "Professional Edition" includes Paradox 9 (database originally written by Borland) and NetPerfect, a server-side network support for document exchange on the Internet / intranet. 

A first thing you notice after installation is the classic WordPerfect pen nub icon that sits on your tool bar is now silver instead of gold. Also the other WordPerfect 9 icons on your tool bar are slightly different than those same WordPerfect 8 icons — just in case you have both programs still installed on your hard drive. 

System requirements
Since this is a suite of programs, WordPerfect Office 2000 Standard is going to occupy a lot of real estate on your hard disk; about 280 MB for a typical install. Luckily, you are presented the option, Install-As-You-Go, which allows you to install applications that you require — only as they are needed. You can get by with as little as 170 MB hard disk space. WP9 requires Windows 95/98 or NT to install — sorry Windows 3.1 users. It also requires at least a 66 MHz CPU and recommends a minimum of 32 MB RAM. 

I have been a long-time user/fan of WordPerfect, starting with version 5x DOS, then migrating to 6.1, skipping version 7 and upgrading to WordPerfect Suite 8. The thing I loved about WP8 was the ability to create multiple address books. My main concern about upgrading was an ability to import my address books to WP9. I checked with Corel technical service to find out if I would have to uninstall WP8 before installing WP9. The tech service representative said I would have no problems running both versions on the same PC. When I first installed WP9, several things didn’t get installed, particularly Corel Central, Corel’s answer to MS Outlook. I then "exported" each of my five WP8 address books to a floppy disk, uninstalled WP8 and installed WP9. Corel Central showed up after the installation. 

Corel Central "gets in your face" a bit more in WP9 in that a three inch wide "My Calendar" appointment/to do list opens up when you boot your computer each day. A click of the X in the upper right closes this narrow list. Those with busy schedules will learn to appreciate this PIM within a program. Another feature new to Corel Central is a little Alarm Clock icon in your tool bar below your active screen. This quick alarm clock is always there, whether you have WordPerfect open or not. Click on the alarm icon and a small window pops up with a space to type in the subject for the alarm (call Marilyn) and many choices for the alarm to alert you — 5 minutes later, up to seven days later. At the appointed time, a window pops up on the screen, no matter what program you are working in, with the reminder you entered. 

A click on the Corel Central icon in your tool bar opens the three inch wide, screen high  "calendar/to do list" mentioned earlier. At the bottom of the "to do list" are four icons: Address Book(s), Calendar, Card File and Memos.  Card File is a mini database manager for those who do not have Paradox database manager packaged within WordPerfect Professional.  Card File can be used as an enhanced address book or to record almost any type of information. This function looks very interesting to me and I plan to explore its capabilities in more detail in the future. 

The Memos icon opens a small window to write quick memos. I’ve not experimented much beyond writing a one line memo and printing it. You can choose different size paper prior to printing. The printed "memo" has a "CorelCENTRAL Memos" header with a line border running around the edge of the paper. I’m not sure how I’ll use the memo feature in the future as I have several existing memo templates carried over from WP8. 

A new tool on the WP9 Application Bar is the AutoScroll tool. You must click on this tool each time you want to use it to scroll up and down your document using your regular mouse. AutoScroll has the functionality of an IntelliMouse (see IntelliMouse review) without the expense of buying one. In other words, keep the 40 bucks you save in not buying an IntelliMouse and buy your wife some flowers for Valentines Day. 

Make It Fit has been enhanced to expand or condense a document in a user-defined space, i.e., condense a page and a quarter of copy to one page — or expand a page and a half of copy to fill two pages. Make It Fit has become a valuable tool to most WordPerfect users. 

Print Preview is now fully editable. You can use editing commands to make changes to your document directly in Print Preview to view results before printing. 

For those with Deskjet printers, a Print Upside Down feature allows the user to print return addresses closer to the edge of an envelope. Sounds like Corel has been listening to its users. 

There are more than 100 new shapes in Graphic objects. Text in Shapes allows the user to insert text in a variety of shapes such as the thought bubble graphic. 

For foreign correspondence, you can choose from a wide variety of multiple languages for use with Spell Checker, Thesaurus and Grammatik. 

The Scrapbook, something I had not used in WP8, has been redesigned in WP9. It can provide you with lots of clip art (this is a Corel product, right?), photos, sounds and movies. It lets you search and preview images, drag and drop, copy and paste ; organizes images by category, and create your own categories. You can also click on the Corel Web Site icon to take you to the Corel Business Applications Community to search for even more clip art selections and add them to your Scrapbook. 

Corel Presentations 9, for slide shows, allows you to send files to and from other presentation applications such as MS Powerpoint. Presentations 9 has redesigned toolbars, giving users access to frequently used features. Using CorelDRAW technology, several new image tools such as Brightness, Contrast, Watermark, Coloring Book and Transparent now available within the product. 

Quattro Pro has been enhanced with several spreadsheet construction improvements. Menus have been restructured to access the most frequently used features. SpeedFunctions such as @SUM, @MIN, @MAX and @AVG are readily available on the toolbar. Row height is automatically adjusted after you enter data in the row. The Euro has been added to the currency numeric format. RealTime Preview lets you experiment with formatting, such as font and font size, to preview your formatting before you apply it to spreadsheet data. Page Breaks shows where a page will break on the spreadsheet when printed. It allows you to change the margins in this view by simply dragging borders. 

While WP9 offers a number of subtle improvements over WP8, the greatest change is Word Perfect’s snugging up to the web. The ability to design web pages and to publish documents to the web without knowing HTML has been made far simplier, thanks to Trellix 2. I’ve not used Trellix other than to convert this review to an HTML document  ready to be published on a web page. Trellix 2 bears more investigation. You can start Trellix from the desktop or from within WordPerfect. You can take a Trellix Quick Tour multimedia overview of how the program works, which I recommend to those users interested in publishing to the web. 

Here are my Top 10 Reasons for Upgrading to WordPerfect 9: 

Corel Corporation 
150 Isabella St., Suite 700 
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1S 1V7. 
Web site: <www.corel.com>.