WordPerfect Opens a New Office

Upgraded office suite adds features requested by loyal users.

Harry McCracken, PCWorld.com

LAS VEGAS-- Microsoft's office suite may have gobbled up the lion's share of the productivity application market. But WordPerfect has done something that Microsoft has not been able to: It has inspired real passion among its users. And with WordPerfect Office 2002, announced at Comdex this week, Corel aims to please those loyal users.

The upgraded suite features improvements based on specific customer requests. In fact, 70 percent of the changes in the upgrade stem from user demand, Corel says.

So what do WordPerfect users want? Not a clone of Microsoft Office, says Graham Brown, Corel's executive vice president for business applications.

"As long as WordPerfect has similar capabilities; they don't want parity with the exact features," Brown says.

Judging from demonstrations at Comdex, the suite, which is scheduled for release in the first half of 2001, won't be undergoing a radical makeover.

Enhanced Applications

In the WordPerfect word processor, many of the changes relate to tools for formatting and navigating complex documents, a longtime WordPerfect specialty. Its table tools will have more spreadsheetlike features, and let you turn existing raw text into an attractive table with a few clicks. The word processor will also boast a built-in version of the Oxford English Dictionary.

In the Quattro Pro spreadsheet, a beefier charting engine will produce slick 3D graphs with special effects; the Presentations module will let you export slide shows in Macromedia Flash format for posting on the Web.

Changes to the CorelCentral personal information manager are more substantial. The program will add a built-in e-mail client with support for multiple accounts, plus workgroup scheduling and task delegation features.

The suite's unique RealTime Preview feature, which previews formatting changes on the fly by temporarily reformatting documents, will become more pervasive. It will allow users to preview color changes before they're made.

Corel also says that it's working to improve the suite's support for Microsoft Office file formats, so users can swap documents with Microsoft-using colleagues without undue hassle.

Corel's plans bear little resemblance to the changes Microsoft will introduce in the next version of Office, due around the middle of 2001. (See "The Suite Hereafter: Sneak Peek at the Next Microsoft Office.")

But like Microsoft, Corel will add features designed to let its applications recover more gracefully from crashes. The suite will automatically recover work that was in progress, and let users choose to restart applications automatically after a failure.

Lacking Some Details

Some important details about the upgrade are yet to be announced, including its cost, but Corel reports that it will continue to undercut Microsoft Office's steep price tag. (The WordPerfect Office 2000 upgrade sells for $100, around a third of what Microsoft charges for Office 2000 Standard Edition.)

The company also hasn't committed to releasing an upgrade to the Linux version of WordPerfect Office, and while it says that the suite will continue to offer built-in voice recognition, it won't say whether it will still be based on technology provided by Dragon Systems, which was recently absorbed by Lernout & Hauspie. (See "WordPerfect Opens Linux Office.")

The WordPerfect Office 2002 announcement comes near the end of an unusually hectic year for Corel. The Ottawa-based developer agreed to purchase venerable software developer Inprise/Borland, then saw the merger plans collapse. It also acquired new management after the departure of its controversial founder Michael Cowpland. (See "Can Corel Return to Profitability?")