Review by Joseph T. Reinckens II

I have been using WordPerfect since DOS version 5.1 and spend the majority of my work day using it. If I have to edit documents in Word I routinely find it easier to copy Word => Notepad =>, redo all the formatting, make the changes, then open the WP document in Word and change the font from Shruti back to Times New Roman. (For some weird reason Word doesn’t recognize that the document was saved with Times New Roman font.) I’m both a Windows and WP power user and have written extensive add-ons for WP that I regularly use at work (also extensive customized menus, toolbars, etc.)nnAlthough I find WP MUCH more user-friendly than other wordprocessors, there are some cautions:nnCorel did a MAJOR rewrite of many routines between WP9 and 10 and some of the code has not changed since 10. Unfortunately, it introduced a number of bugs–I have seen the same problems with X, X2, X3 and X4 (I don’t have X5 but there is no indication from Corel that those routines have changed).

1) WP has a tendency to outright crash. Accordingly, SET AUTOSAVE TO 3 MINUTES.

2) Changing formatting across page breaks doesn’t work properly. For instance, hi-lite text covering 3 pages and then press F4 (hard left indent). All the paragraphs on the first page will be indented. As soon as you hit a page break the rest won’t be changed. (The problem is not limited to left indent.) I have notified Corel of this on NUMEROUS occasions in their customer surveys but they still haven’t changed it.

The formatting problem is mainly just a minor annoyance now and then. Obviously, I don’t routinely have to change formatting across multiple pages. It can be a problem if you aren’t aware of it and you think you’ve reformatted an entire section and don’t proof it. But the random crashes definitely are annoying.

Because of these two problems, I give it a 4 instead of a 5.