Office Suite Showdown: Corel WordPerfect Office X3 No Need to Jump Through Hoops Here Wayne Kawamoto
Forget the staid, starched-collar business attitude of the traditional office suite. Corel's latest WordPerfect Office X3 - Standard Edition offers a more visual, Windows-style interface, and Corel's even given the packaging a colorful, streamlined look.
But beneath its rather consumer-oriented exterior, you'll find software that easily handles the demands of small businesses and, in a few areas, exceeds the capabilities found in Microsoft Office.
The WordPerfect Office X3 suite comes with WordPerfect X3, a great word processor; Quattro Pro X3, a solid spreadsheet; Presentations X3, an adequate presentation package; and a few welcome additions. With its new PDF capabilities, Quattro Pro Crosstab feature, and even stronger Microsoft compatibility and style, the WordPerfect Office X3 suite makes an excellent choice for anyone looking for a less-expensive office application suite.
Acrobat: Eliminating the Need to Jump Through Hoops
WordPerfect continues to offer built-in PDF (Adobe Acrobat) support so other people can view your documents without having to worry about matching applications and fonts, something that Microsoft Office lacks. In this iteration, Quattro Pro and Presentations gain PDF publishing capabilities of their own, and in WordPerfect, the feature has been enhanced to convert table-of-content headings into PDF bookmarks — a convenience that makes for better navigation within published PDF documents.
Taking its capabilities even further, WordPerfect now lets you import PDF files and work with PDF-based text and images within the word processor — an innovative new feature.
In testing, the PDF import feature did a capable job of handling text, but its ability to interpret formatting was inconsistent. There's definite room for improvement, but this is to be expected when dealing with PDF documents with complex formatting. Regardless, the ability to import PDF files is a major step forward and clearly sets WordPerfect Office apart from – and ahead of – Microsoft Office.
WordPerfect maintains excellent file compatibility with Microsoft Office while continuing to evolve and improve it. While the last version's translation tools were accurate and reliable, WordPerfect now does a better job of handling text alignments, table borders, and automatic paragraph numbering. In addition to opening Microsoft Office files, you can set WordPerfect and the other Corel programs to reliably save documents in standard Office formats: .doc, .xls and .ppt by default.
WordPerfect Office X3 Standard Edition takes a friendlier, less business-like approach in its interface and packaging.
Save with Corel
A new "save without metadata" feature saves files and removes the underlying notes, edits, and other information that can impact a company's security. Another convenience, the programs now offer integrated Yahoo Search capabilities to quickly perform Web searches. It's a feature that lets you simply highlight a term or word in WordPerfect and immediately perform your Web search.
Writers and editors will love the much-improved word count button. It used to be buried in Properties, which was hidden under File. If you managed to find it at all, you then had to press a tab to use it. Now it's just a convenient one-click feature.
Another option removes formatting so that it's easier to cut and paste text from Web pages, and there's even a keyboard shortcut that lets you quickly perform the task.
Enhanced multilingual support offers more accurate depictions of Czech, Russian, and other eastern European languages. You can now view WordPerfect documents through a Web browser, although the computer must have WordPerfect installed.
The suite now supports labels from C-Line and Wilson Jones, in addition to the Avery labels it already supports. The Presentations Graphics X3 program, which in the past only supported Presentations, has been integrated into the suite so that the other applications may take advantage of its drawing and diagram capabilities.
Small business owners will love the Corel license flexibility that allows for an additional, free installation of the suite on a home computer or laptop. In other words, you'll no longer need to purchase another copy for a second computer — a real money saver.
