A Suite Upgrade for WordPerfect Fans

Let WordPerfect be WordPerfect. That's the philosophy behind Corel's WordPerfect Office 2002, the newest upgrade to the venerable business applications suite. Rather than chase after Microsoft Office users or suite newbies, Corel says that it has focused on features for current WordPerfect aficionados. The result is an extremely capable product, though one not radically different from its predecessor. I tried out a shipping version of the software.

Unlike Microsoft's new Office XP, the $399 WordPerfect Office 2002 doesn't sport a heavily revamped look. Most interface changes are subtle: For instance, RealTime Preview--a handy feature (and one that Microsoft Office still lacks) that shows how prospective formatting changes will affect documents--now shows up in more places.

More than ever, the suite's namesake word processor is an excellent tool for crafting long, complex documents. It now lets you hop through a lengthy file by jumping to hyperlinks, text boxes, and other elements, and it does a better job than its predecessor of turning raw text into tables. Also new in this edition is an integrated version of the Oxford English Dictionary, with definitions of 30,000 words.

The most striking change in the Quattro Pro spreadsheet is its new charting engine, which lets you produce slick, shaded 3D graphs. Presentations, the suite's presentation app, can now export Flash slide shows that retain animation effects and display equally well in the Web browsers of both Microsoft and Netscape. WordPerfect also has improved PDF export capabilities, so anyone who has installed Adobe's free Acrobat Reader software can view your documents.

CorelCentral, formerly a single-user calendar and address book, now handles e-mail and group scheduling, too. But the e-mail client is effectively a stand-alone application, not very well integrated with CorelCentral's other tools. And while it has a friendly look resembling that of Microsoft's Outlook Express, it could use more power and polish. For instance, it handles multiple accounts less adeptly than Outlook Express, and it lacks filtering tools for sorting incoming messages automatically.

WordPerfect Office 2002 Professional ($499) includes the Paradox database--little-changed from the previous version--and Dragon's excellent NaturallySpeaking 5 voice recognition software, a more highly evolved dictation system than Microsoft Office XP's new voice recognition program, albeit one that hogs system resources.

Upgraders shouldn't have trouble sharing documents with users of previous WordPerfect versions, since the suite's file formats haven't changed. Of course, in a Microsoft-centric world, it's at least as important for WordPerfect Office to handle Microsoft Office files. In my tests, simple documents usually came through with few glitches. Fancy formatting was often lost, however, and WordPerfect couldn't open a couple of Word files at all.

One major addition to WordPerfect Office 2002 mirrors a change in Office XP: When suite apps crash, they try to recover work in progress and to relaunch themselves. I didn't have the final versions long enough to gauge their stability, but one hopes that users will rarely be forced to depend on this feature.

Note: After our review appeared in the July issue of PC World magazine, Corel had to ship its first service pack for WordPerfect Office 2002 to fix a major problem: Some Windows 2000 users couldn't run the suite at all. Instead, they encountered an obscure error message, "Unable to load WPWIN10.DLL." SP1 also fixes a problem people had setting up poster pages with multiple page sizes.

The 811KB patch is named WPO2002Patch.exe. According to a Corel spokesperson, the company is already shipping the updated code in the latest shrink-wrapped versions of the product--a process known as "slipstreaming."

SUMMARY

WordPerfect Office 2002 PRO: Adds Oxford English Dictionary; better spreadsheet charting; has new e-mail client. CON: Doesn't handle all Microsoft files well; e-mail app needs better integration, lacks some features. VALUE: No earthshaking improvements, but a capable, less-costly upgrade than Microsoft Office. List price: Standard edition $399, upgrade $159; Professional edition $499, upgrade $259 Corel 800/772-6735 www.officecommunity.com