Corel WordPerfect Office 2000

Corel WordPerfect Office 2000 gets the upgrade process right. The main applications from Office 8 keep their classic look and feel, except for the CorelCentral PIM. Once an oversize clunker, CorelCentral is now clean, compact, and efficient. Internet integration is enhanced throughout with industry-standard formats, in contrast to Microsoft Office 2000, which relies heavily on Microsoft-specific extensions.

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Compatibility and efficiency were Corel's major goals for this release. File formats are the same as earlier versions, and the suite can default to opening and saving Microsoft Office files in Microsoft formats. Corel's new version won't tempt Microsoft users to switch, but it gives long-term WordPerfect users a compelling upgrade path, and upgrading is eased by a new Corel Distribute utility that lets system administrators run customized server-based installations.

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The suite's Standard Edition ($580 street, $249 upgrade) comprises WordPerfect 9, Quattro Pro 9, Presentations 9, CorelCentral 9, the suite's Desktop Application Director toolbar, Trellix 2, and integration with Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications. Integrated add-ons let you publish files in eXtensible Markup Language (XML), Adobe's PDF format, or in Trellix-format hyperlinked files. The Voice-Powered Edition ($649 street, $349 upgrade) adds Dragon NaturallySpeaking 3.0--which is tightly integrated with WordPerfect 9--and Corel Print Office desktop publisher. The Professional Edition ($739 street, $399 upgrade) adds Paradox 9 and NetPerfect, an ingenious automated Web-publishing utility that converts documents into HyperText Markup Language (HTML) pages, creates links to them on a Web page, and uploads them to a server at user-specified intervals.

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New conveniences in WordPerfect, Quattro Pro, and Presentations include a real-time preview that reformats a file on-screen as you scroll through a list of fonts or experiment with colors or other graphics features. (The preview slows to a crawl with long documents and can be turned off.) A redesigned graphics scrapbook, simpler and smaller than Microsoft's Clip Gallery, lets you easily insert images, sounds, and videos from on-disk catalogs or the Web. You can install the scrapbook and other nonessential features from the CD-ROM as needed without closing an application.

WordPerfect enhancements include an auto-scroll toolbar button, which when clicked, moves a document up or down the screen without making you hold down a key or mouse button. Browser-style Next and Previous buttons (like those in Microsoft Word) jump between pages, tables, graphics, and headers. The Make It Fit feature now automatically resizes text either in a block or in the entire document.

WordPerfect can be used for basic HTML creation and editing, but you may find it more annoying than useful as a Web page editor. The default Web page template uses a gray background color (as did ancient versions of Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer), and the option to make a Web page display using a browser's default colors doesn't work. WordPerfect's unique markup-language editing tools now create XML files in addition to Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) files.

WordPerfect surpasses Word in its handling of multiple formats in the same document, complex multichapter documents, and booklet-style layouts. The optional Reveal Codes view looks archaic but allows unparalleled control over formatting. And an editable facing-page view enhances desktop-publishing capabilities. Amazingly, though, WordPerfect still can't search for and replace font attributes, so you'll need to write or find a third-party macro if you want to replace underlines with italics.

The new Corel Quattro Pro adds a Web query tool that previews data pulled from remote HTML pages--a convenience not found in Excel. Quattro Pro's crosstabs feature, however, lacks Excel's wizard-based ease and in-place modifications of existing tables. New display options include a tiny, blue triangle in cells that contain formulas and a command to view page breaks in the editing window. A Formula Composer provides multiple views of complex formulas for ease in debugging. You can set Quattro Pro to use Excel or Lotus 1-2-3 file formats and menu layouts as the program's default, but when this option is chosen many advanced Quattro Pro features aren't available. Spreadsheets can be saved in XML and HTML formats.

Corel Presentations imports and exports PowerPoint files and includes new bitmap tools to control brightness, contrast, and other image attributes. New graphics tools include flowchart-style shapes, and a wizard walks users through the process of creating a Web-based slide show. Paradox includes new wizards for ease in building tables and queries and the latest version of the Borland database engine. The suite's biggest change is its slimmed-down CorelCentral PIM, a combined calendar, task list, and address book that slides off the screen when not in use. The address book displays both its own entries and those from the Windows address book, and uses your default mail program to send messages.

Despite some minor first-release bugs (options like Web backgrounds that don't work and arcane features like screen-font controls that sometimes crash), Corel WordPerfect Office 2000 offers across-the-board improvements in speed, compatibility, and reliability. All current users will find the new version worth the upgrade price.

Corel WordPerfect Office 2000. Standard Edition, $580 street (upgrade $249); Voice-Powered Edition, $649 (upgrade $349); Professional Edition, $739 (upgrade $399). Requires: Windows 95, 98, or NT 4.0 or later, 16MB of RAM, and 170MB of hard disk space. Corel; 1800 658 850; www.corel.com.