Corel WordPerfect Office 2020 Standard | Word Processor, Spreadsheets, Presentations | Newsletters, Labels, Envelopes, Reports, Fillable PDF Forms, eBooks [PC Disc] [Old Version]

I’ve been a user of both Wordperfect and MS Office for over thirty years. During that period, I gained a ton of practical hands-on experience using both. I’ve also dabbled with open-source options like OpenOffice and LibreOffice on occasion. Although I don’t know all of the little tricks and nuances that WordPerfect and MS Office have to offer, I have a pretty good working knowledge and comfort level using both. WordPerfect Office 2020 suite was very easy and straightforward to install and activate. During setup the program offers the option of associating Wordperfect with commonly used MS Office file types like doc, docx, xls, xlsx, etc. This is helpful for anyone not familiar with manually setting file associations in Windows and allows Wordperfect to open MS Office file types automatically. The primary apps in the suite are Wordperfect, Quattro Pro, Presentations and Lightning. Their respective MS Office counterparts would be Word, Excel, Powerpoint and One Note. AfterShot 3 photo editor and WordPerfect eBook publisher are also included. There is no email and scheduling client like Outlook included with Wordperfect suite. The biggest and most noticeable functional difference between Wordperfect suite and MS Office is the absence of the ribbon. Wordperfect suite not only lacks the ribbon but has a less polished appearance overall. The apps have a bland utilitarian look compared to the sleek, translucent and more modern interface of recent MS Office suites. The WordPerfect interface more resembles Office 2003 than Office 365. Also, since there is no ribbon, features are accessed via drop-down menus. Wordperfect word processor is a robust and worthy alternative to Word. It shares most of the same features for composing business letters and other documents. WP also has some of its own advantages. I personally find the default document layout and formatting options of Wordperfect preferable to that in Word. Wordperfect enables several helpful formatting tools by default that must be manually enabled in Word. It’s also easier to perform more precise formatting in WordPerfect. I believe this is why WordPerfect has remained popular with law offices and organizations that require letters adhering to strict formatting guidelines. As far as my personal home needs, there isn’t anything lacking in Wordperfect compared to Word. Wordperfect can open and save-as a ton of different file types including most early and current Word formats as well as PDF. It’s a good thing WordPerfect can open, share and save-as various Word file types because saving in WordPerfect’s native wpd file type can be problematic when sharing documents. Incorrect formatting is the biggest issue when sharing wpd documents with Word users. As a test, I created a document in WordPerfect with moderate formatting and saved it in Wordperfect’s default wpd format. When I opened the document in Word 365, there were numerous formatting issues. I saved the same document in WordPerfect as a docx file and the formatting issues disappeared when I opened the docx in Word. I also noticed that Word’s spell checker and review features don’t work on wpd files but do work on WordPerfect created docx files. One other thing I noticed was WordPerfect’s spell checker sometimes had issues with properly spelled words. I attached a screen shot of WordPerfect suggesting I replace the correctly used word “color” with “collor”. I noticed the word “colour” was available as a suggestion as well. It seems to be a random glitch and I was unable to re-create that particular issue but felt it worth mentioning since it did occur. Quattro Pro is even more problematic when it comes to cross platform compatibility. Fortunately, like WordPerfect, Quattro also allows saving in MS file formats like xls and xlsx that are compatible with early and current versions of Excel. I performed a similar test in Quattro where I saved a spreadsheet in both Quattro’s native qpw and Office xlsx formats. Excel was unable able to open the qpw file and it wasn’t even recognized by Windows as a known file type. Excel easily opened the Quattro created xlsx spreadsheet and even properly retained all of my formulas. Quattro is also less efficient to use due to many of the features being buried in drill down menus. Many of these same commonly used features are openly visible and readily available on the ribbon in Excel. Also, I can’t simply right-click to format an entire row or column in Quattro like I can with Excel. I only briefly peeked at Presentations because I’m not typically a PowerPoint user. I don’t really need or use it for anything at work or home. I can say that like the other apps in the suite, the Presentations interface is basic and utilitarian in appearance compared to PowerPoint. I like Lightning even though it’s not quite on the level of OneNote. I find OneNote unnecessarily complicated to use and typically return to other note taking methods pretty quickly each time I try to use it. Lightning offers a much less complicated interface. This makes it easier than OneNote to dive right in and use even if you’ve never used it before. Lightning is not without some faults as well, particularly the snapshot tool which doesn’t seem to work properly. Rather than turning into crosshairs that allow me to select the snapshot region, the cursor gets stuck in the bottom corner of my screen. This happens nearly every time I use snapshot. It has worked properly only a few times. The biggest and most obvious advantage of WordPerfect Office over MS Office is price. A perpetual home use WordPerfect Office license is actually cheaper than a one year subscription for a similar home version of Office 365. For home users who don’t share or collaborate on a lot of files, it’s a very enticing alternative to MS Office. Yes, it’s missing the ribbon and some other fluff and has a few minor issues but MS Office is not without its own issues. WordPerfect is more than sufficient for occasional spreadsheets, business letters or slideshows. It’s also a less expensive way to read and modify MS Office documents. The choice is a little harder for business and SOHO users. The absence of an email/scheduling client and the less compatible default file formats of WordPerfect Office may make MS Office a better solution for professional users.

Why would anyone use WordPerfect in a Microsoft Word world? WordPerfect is losing market share to Word and now, especially in the legal field, you find Word is the standard. It used to be legal offices LOVED WordPerfect so I wonder how long the Corel platform will be around. But many still use it. WP handles long documents well and the Reveal Code feature has helped many a person edit errors and formatting in a convenient way. For home users. the advantage is the pricing structure. Like many software platforms, Word has gone to yearly subscription. You keep paying. Now in a corporate setting this isnt so terrible, because you should stay up to date on versions and not let the software drag behind. But for home users, staying even three years behind current is no problem as long as you are compatible with the most current operating system. (Im trying to say here, if you are still on Win7 will you please stop that? There are many problems with operating systems out of support; new software isnt compatible and your antivirus may not be effective. New device drivers wont be on Win7.) So WordPerfect lets you buy a copy and pay for it and youre done unless you want to upgrade. Pros: WordPerfect doesnt charge you for an add-on module in order to make PDFs, share and edit them. In addition to PDF functionality, you get eBook Publisher, and Mail Merge Expert. Cons: File sharing. This is sadly, the star-off on the rating. Even saving files in MS format, sharing can yield unreliable results. And if no one else uses WordPerfect in your work group, you wont be sharing .wpd files. You can save in Rich Text in order to remove codes that interfere with sharing but you can lose some formatting. Another downside; it doesnt look and feel like Microsoft Word. And the suite companions Quattro Pro and Presentation arent super great--esp Quattro Pro which didnt keep up with Excel. Bottom Line: For home word processing with a lot of power, this has it. The cost is a lot less than subscribing to Microsoft Word. If you dont worry about file sharing in Word, you will be fine using it. Basically, you get a full featured word processor without paying a lot, and for my needs at home, I do fine with that.

Just an upgrade. Assumed Microsoft had changed Windows 10 enough that my version of the WordPerfect suite would start encountering problems, so jumped at the chance to be up to date. Just a personal preference but I refuse to rent Office by the year.

Great! A very friendly user interface! Does everything I need around the office! Just... Perfect!

WordPerfect has always been my go to word processing program for my office. It is easy to learn, manage and use. It also works and plays well with others including Microsoft Word, Adobe etc.

While I understand the reason behind Microsoft’s going to a subscription model for Office, I’m simply sick of having so many different pieces of software that require a subscription in order for me to use them. I had used WordPerfect many years ago and when I saw how this version of WordPerfect had support for 60 file types I decided it was time for me to give it a try again. As someone who has worked exclusively within the Office Suite for many years there are some differences but they are minor and didn’t take long for me to figure out. Corel knows users are more familiar with the Office software so they have worked to make this as intuitive as possible without violating any copyright. The one area where this software really lags behind Office is in spreadsheets. Depending on how often you use this type of thing that would be something to consider. Since I don’t use it too frequently, although I do a bit, I’ve made it work with effort. In terms of the word processing program which is what I primarily use, it’s excellent and I have no complaints. Use is straightforward, easy to figure out, quick to find what you need, lots of built in templates and best of all - no ongoing subscription fee to pay! I’ve been very satisfied with this product after using it for the last couple of months and have recommended it to several friends as I will to you as well.

I purchased the Word Perfect product in order to do legal transcription work. I used Word Perfect many years ago in the legal field so am now getting reacquainted with the program.

My husband has an older computer without a good word processor or other office tools. The Corel Word Perfect was easy to download. There is a CD and a web site. The disc did not work but the website had easy steps for downloading. There are other office applications with this too such as a slide power point and a spreadsheet application. I found the WP application easy to use. It had all the fonts I would expect although I did not find Helvetica but Times New Roman was there, and that is the font he tends to use. You can easily add tables into documents. Formatting was easy too. The spelling was fine but not the grammar section. MS word is better. All the tools are user friendly. Footnotes and endnotes were simple to insert also. I would state that with the exception of the grammar tool this is a very good office suite.

Same as older versions for the most part.

I have updated this program with every new iteration and always find it to be worthwhile, even when the update only consists of doing more of the same a bit smoother and easier But I also want to recommend this whole heartedly to those folks, each year, for whom this is their first office program It is superior in every way to that other famous office. This wasnt always the case, but it is now