Corel® WordPerfect® Office X3 remains light-years ahead of the competition
2006 was an exciting year for the office productivity market, with the launch of countless exciting new technologies, including the new Corel® WordPerfect® Office X3. 2007 has a lot in store too, starting with Microsoft's upcoming response to Corel WordPerfect Office X3: Microsoft® Office 2007.
So what do the other guys have in store? Well, you might be surprised to learn that quite a few Microsoft Office 2007 features will be very familiar to longtime Corel WordPerfect Office users! As many as 8 of the top 10 benefits of Microsoft Office 2007 provide capabilities that have already been addressed by Corel WordPerfect Office X3. Some "new" features of Microsoft Office 2007 have even been part of Corel WordPerfect Office for close to a decade!
Savvy WordPerfect users can stand proud: they have had these features for years. Here's a quick look at some of the benefits Microsoft Office 2007 has in store, according to Microsoft's website at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HA101650321033.aspx, and some insight on how the other guy matches up to Corel WordPerfect Office.
"Spend more time writing and less time formatting."
In this release, Microsoft has introduced a radically different interface and new tools intended to reduce the complexity of the formatting features in Microsoft Word. Unfortunately, the new interface may create immeasurable issues as millions of experienced customers are forced to learn to use the new Microsoft Office.Microsoft says its redesign of commonly used formatting tools make specific tools more quickly accessible when needed. This is sound concept—one that WordPerfect users have been enjoying for some time! Context-sensitive toolbars and Corel® RealTime Preview™ (which lets you preview formatting changes before they are applied) have been making it easy to format documents since 1999, when WordPerfect Office 2000 was released. Furthermore, the most frequently used formatting commands are now a mere mouse click away as a result of continued refinements to the context-sensitive right-click menus (the Corel® QuickMenu™ feature).
"Communicate more effectively with SmartArt diagrams and new charting tools."
New features in Microsoft Office Word 2007 provide such effects as 3-D shapes, transparency, and drop shadows. Would it surprise you to learn that 3-D charts, with customizable lighting options, have been available in WordPerfect since version 10 (WordPerfect Office 2002)? With a chart selected, you can use the 3-D Chart button on the toolbar to switch between a 2-D and 3-D effect. This technique works for virtually every type of chart (pie, bar, or line). Furthermore, you can customize lighting options to create just the effect you want."Save as PDF or XPS directly from Office Word 2007."
WordPerfect users have been publishing to PDF since the release of WordPerfect 9 in 1999, and to XML since the release of WordPerfect 12 in 2004. Furthermore, to publish to PDF Microsoft Office 2007 users presently will have to download and install an aftermarket add-on.Can users of Microsoft Office Word 2007 edit PDF documents? Instead, users can publish to XML Paper Specification (XPS)—a new file format that has few users, compared with the nearly ubiquitous PDF file format.
"Master your document review processes using Office Word 2007 and Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007."
WordPerfect has always had powerful features for reviewing documents. In WordPerfect 11, a collaborative e-mail review feature was added to support Outlook® routing of document revisions. More recently, the Compare and Review features of WordPerfect Office X3 make it simple to review, track changes, or compare documents in WordPerfect (WPD), Microsoft Word (DOC), and other formats—and you can view WPD files when using Microsoft® SharePoint® Server.For more robust collaboration through documentation management systems (DMS), support for ODMA (Open Document Management API) makes WordPerfect Office compatible with DMSs, such as Hummingbird®, WORLDOX®, and iManage®. Incidentally, ODMA integration has been a part of WordPerfect since version 6.1.
The document routing feature that was introduced in WordPerfect 11 can also be used with Outlook and WordPerfect® MAIL™. You can choose reviewers from the Outlook address book, the WordPerfect MAIL address book, or any WordPerfect address book. After the list of reviewers is built, the document is routed to each reviewer in turn, and then back to the author, with all comments and suggested edits in one document.
"Connect your documents to business information."
Built first and foremost for enterprise, Microsoft Office 2007 focuses heavily on back-end connections using XML, something that WordPerfect Office has been doing with SGML, XML and more since WordPerfect Suite 8 in 1997. WordPerfect also integrates easily with back-end tools (such as. Oracle® or SAP® applications).Do you need to provide intelligent templates for creating structured documents, or develop complete enterprise-wide publishing solutions? Corel can help. Corel Professional Services and consulting division can extend Corel WordPerfect Office with any combination of customizable features from the Standard Edition or Professional Edition of WordPerfect Office X3.
"Remove tracked changes, comments, and hidden text from your documents."
For years, metadata has been causing security headaches for many users. Since 2006, users of Corel WordPerfect Office X3 have been scrubbing documents of insecure metadata. No plug-in is required. Simply use File > Save without Metadata to save a clean copy of your file."Reduce your file sizes and improve corrupt file recovery."
The new Open XML formats in Microsoft Office reduce file size and recover damaged files, but at what cost? Microsoft Office 2007 will save to the new XML formats by default, so there may soon be millions of documents being created in a file format that may not be readable by older versions of Microsoft Office. It will be up to each user to add the filters needed to read the new file formats—that is, if the Microsoft Office version is supported. This change could require an investment of time, money and effort, plus potentially confusion for users."Open" XML formats are about more than just smaller file sizes. Ideally, open file formats release you from the risk of being locked into a single, expensive software provider, giving you or your organization greater control over your documents. WordPerfect Office will soon support not only the Microsoft Office Open XML format, but also the ISO standard Open Document Format (ODF), benefitting users by allowing them to choose the XML format that best meets their needs.