Review by James Beswick

I originally used WordPerfect and migrated to MS Office due to my work environment so it’s been more than a decade since I last tried Corel’s alternative office suite. Amazingly, as Office has become more convoluted since the 2010 version with useless task ribbons and endless security options, WordPerfect has stepped in to fill the void where you can find many lost MS users.

WordPerfect is practically 100% compatible in file formats, has some great PDF tools and a massive library of extra software and content. Many of the features that used to be simple in Office are well implemented here - columns, tables, footers, headers and all the features you would use frequently are very obvious. A few of options are different to Office but are easy to find and understand and overall this is simple version that’s very fast and stable.

Comparing Corel and Microsoft in their latest office suites, my observation would be that WordPerfect has been developed with the user in mind (and many features have clearly been UI tested) where MS has approached the problem based around what they feel the user should like, given their predisposition to Windows 8 and touchscreen interfaces. Ultimately, it’s a personal preference but if you’ve been frustrated with newer versions of Office, the WordPerfect suite might be a welcome upgrade.