WordPerfect? Word?
(Copyright © 1999 T Bruce Tober)
Early on, a colleague recommended WP to me and I've been using it since. The "techies" laughed. They were hooked on W* and couldn't understand why anyone would want "less". They arrogantly predicted WP would be a has been within a year.
They were proved wrong.
WP took the lead within a couple of years, commanding approximately 80% of the market. The legal profession was especially fond of it because of its speed, ease of use, flexibility and not least of all because of its huge spell checker which included about 12,000 legal terms.
One very important reason for the migration from W* to WP was the fact that WP was designed by and for users whereas W* was designed by computer programmers, or so it appeared.
People bought W*, more often than not, because it was bundled with their new computer. Or their computer consultant sold it to them. They switched to WP because they knew what they wanted/needed from a word processing package and found that WP met those needs.
But for several years now WP has been in the reverse position - the king faced with (and in the past few years) beaten by Microsoft Word (MW).
They switched to WP because they knew what they wanted/needed from a word processing package and found that WP met those needs.
MW took the lead from WP for some very similar reasons to those cited for W*'s original "popularity". Computers, more often than not, were sold with MW bundled in. It had a Windows interface and Windows was all the rage (WP was admittedly slow off the mark with a Windows version and its first attempts were rather dismal, for a variety of reasons).
And, perhaps even more importantly, many computer consultants have been hired on as MIS chiefs, no longer coming in and consulting based on best practice and perceived need, but rather dictating apparently based on two requisites: Is it a Windows program and is it a Microsoft program. It the answer to both questions is "yes" it gets installed and used, if the answer is "no" it gets removed.
Nick Montague, a senior manager with an MBA on leave from his regular job to work in the public sector in London, points out. "The IT Unit should be a service organisation and its role should be to determine, and not to dictate, user requirements," he says.
Never having liked WP very much (mild understatement) to begin with, the techies now had the opportunity to throw it out in favour of their own new favourite.
But enough history. Why should any law office (or other business) currently considering changing from WP to MW resist the change?
There are many reasons, enormously important ones. A few which spring to mind immediately include: loss of WP's reveal codes function; the cost of replacement of software and licences; the freedom of the WP license as opposed to the restrictiveness of the MW one; the cost of retraining; the cost of down-time for installation and configuration of software, training of staff and conversion of documents; MW's complete lack of downward compatibility and total lack of support for versions other than the current one.
"I can only hope WP hangs on for a long time. Lawyers like us, use it," says Rene deLaup, a sole practitioner in New Orleans, La. "Many are under pressure from their clients who use Word. But I think most just unthinkingly switch from WP for DOS to Word."
As someone wondered recently on one of the Internet newsgroups for lawyers, "Why would anyone switch to Word just because our clients are doing so? Are we all lemmings?"
"WP and Word are very, very different from each other," explains an independent IT consultant working extensively with lawyers. "Their theories of text manipulation are apples and oranges." For example, he mentions:
But the one major difference that virtually everyone, including Microsoft (they've been promising, but failing, to implement it for years) cites is WP's reveal codes feature. This lifesaver shows the user where each formatting code is so it can easily and quickly be adjusted to correct or improve formatting of the document.
"Why would anyone switch to Word just because our clients are doing so? Are we all lemmings?"
Anyone who's tried to fix a formatting problem in a MW document, or simply to change the formatting to make it more to their liking, is either out of luck of in for a major, time-consuming hassle.
Most find themselves deleting the offending text (formatting and all) and typing it all in again with the new attempt at formatting.
Another important consideration is the financial one. And here there are at least two factors to consider:
• The down-time involved in installing and configuring MW and then converting your documents and macros from WP
to MW (much of which formatting will not translate well, if at all, in all honesty NO software translates flawlessly
from one program to another).
• The down-time of retraining your staff to use MW after years of using WP. Although some MW mavens claim it only
takes a couple of days, those experienced in the retraining know it can take weeks.
Gordon McComb, one of the most prolific authors of books and articles on both WP and MW (he also consults on both programs), says:
Furthermore, as Montague notes, "Whatever the comparative merits of the two software suites, considered objectively... it is more sensible to build on existing skills. The costs of moving to a new suite are not just those directly associated with training (and the sunk costs of scrapping previous training), but the hidden costs in time, effort and frustration afterwards until newly-acquired skills become instinctive."
"Those firms who made the move from a DOS-based to a Windows-based program," he continues, "let alone from one program to another competing one in the past will surely recognise that to be the case."
And then there's MW's propensity to force the user to do things its way. The 1980's computer cliche, "user friendly" dictates that software be able to be configured to do things the way the user wishes as much as possible. MW (as with most other Microsoft products) is rather authoritarian in the way it dictates how functions will be performed.
As one colleague put it recently, "It makes decisions for me that I don't want made.
"And there are things Word can't do," he said, "that I've absolutely taken for granted in WP. For
example, there's no flush right - you can't have text flush at both the left and right margins unless you use tabs.
And there's no indenting on the fly. Drives me crazy.
"Complex table sorts and formulas are non-existent (Word's own help files admit it's easier to embed an Excel spreadsheet in a Word file than to create table formulas)," he continued. WP, on the other hand, has a rather good, full-featured, spreadsheet program built into its tables and columns functions.
"But, Word does have some neat things.... The fact that Word's macro language is VBA makes it powerful, indeed."
Yes, I agreed with him, "powerful indeed." The only problem is that it is that very same VBA macro language which makes Word macros susceptible to increasing numbers of some of the most dangerous computer viruses in the industry.
"for both corporates and home users alike macro viruses (specifically Microsoft Word ones) are the biggest problem today. These viruses have in the three years of their existence come to dominate the 'top of the pop' stakes in terms of prevalence."
As the Anti-Virus program publisher, Dr Solomon's says, "for both corporates and home users alike macro viruses (specifically Microsoft Word ones) are the biggest problem today. These viruses have in the three years of their existence come to dominate the 'top of the pop' stakes in terms of prevalence."
Employees producing legal documents have a different set of work habits from those in other fields. As Karen Gibson, an MIS professional, says "Word just can't match WP in the features legal professionals need and use. Corel recognized this a while ago and has sunk some time and effort in producing the recently-released Legal Suite edition of WP8." These include:
• HotDocs® 4.1 – document assembly tool.
• Dragon NaturallySpeaking™ - large vocabulary, general purpose, continuous speech-recognition system.
• Corel® Amicus™ Attorney 2.8 – practice management tools.
• NexLaw™ 8 – Legal-specific supplemental WP menus and toolbars and multiple clipboards.
• NexFax™ - Fax directly from WP using the Fax button on the toolbar.
• CiteLink™ 1.0 – finds legal citations in WP documents, automatically marks them and then generates a Table of
Authorities.
• Lexicon from BLACK's Law Dictionary® – WP spell checker includes the full lexicon from Black's.
• Corel® Address Book – Store important information and share it across your organization.
Bearing all this in mind, I would suggest that if you're thinking of changing your word processing software, go for it. But don't go from WP to MW. Instead, you'd be best advised to go from any other version of WP to WP8 Legal Edition.
But, you say, you wouldn't want to switch your entire staff to the Legal edition, they don't all need those enhancements. No problem. Unlike MW which lacks downward compatibility of files, WP files created in any version from 5.1+ to the current version 8, are all compatible. Some advanced formatting features may not fully translate, but all files can be read and most formatting will remain intact.
Functionality will remain intact also. You can implement, almost the entire WP5.1 keyboard
that your staff has grown to know and love, into versions 6, 7 and/or 8.
MW does not continue support for previous versions. WP does. New WP printer, video and other drivers are available
for versions including down to 5.1. New macros and tech support are likewise available for them at the Corel Website
and elsewhere. You won't find any such files at the Microsoft WWW site.
Unlike MW which lacks downward compatibility of files, WP files created in any version from 5.1+ to the current version 8, are all compatible.
So unless you're willing to shell out good money every time Microsoft brings out another version of MW (you'll have to or you won't be able to read some documents sent you by clients using the most recent MW version); and unless you're planning never to change printers, monitors or computers, stick with WP.