Advanced WordPerfect
Margolis Edelstein has long relied on WordPerfect rather than Microsoft Office for the generation and editing of most of its documents. For anyone interested on why we use WordPerfect over MS Word, you may want to read my earlier blog post on the topic. Today's post is not discussing the relative merits of WordPerfect. It is simply a discussion of some of the advanced features that you might find useful if you already use it.
The latest version of Corel WordPerfect is X7, the 17th version of the product. I know that many of you are still using older versions. We don't typically update WordPerfect until we replace your computer, unless there is some specific need that you have for the latest version. Apologies also to the Wilmington office which has never jumped on the WordPerfect bandwagon. I'm afraid you'll find today's post only of theoretical interest.
I continue to believe that WordPerfect is by far the most powerful and feature rich word processing program available today. We are going to discuss advanced features and a few other tips and recommendations.
I know this is a longer post than usual, and that your time is valuable, so you may want to browse the headers for anything of interest and skip the parts that are not as important to you.
Make the Most of your Toolbar
If you don’t want to search around in the menus for a function that you use regularly, an icon can almost always be added to your toolbar for quick and easy access. Typically, we add “Publish to PDF" and "Save As Microsoft Word" by default since they are two of the most popular. If there are other functions you want added, just contact the Help Desk and someone will assist you with this.
Avoid Losing Work
If you open up an old document intending to use it as a model to create a new one, remember to click on File, Save As, right away so you create a new document with a new name. Otherwise, you may accidentally hit Save and overwrite the original document.
Also, remember to save your work regularly, every 10 or 15 minutes. WordPerfect or your computer generally could crash. You don’t want to lose what you have written. So frequent saves are a very good habit.
Macros
A macro in WordPerfect is a way to carry out several steps with only one click. You can bring up a certain document automatically (current file list for example) or insert a phrase, paragraph or entire letter instantly. Many of you already use macros which were created by Mary or Lucy to put in the “header” information at the top of a letter (attorney name, phone number, email address, etc.) or an attorney signature at the end of a letter. If you’re interested in learning more about how macros might be able to help you in your day-to-day job duties, send an email to the Help Desk and we’ll set up some one-on-one training.
WordPerfect and PDF
A big focus of WordPerfect over the last few versions, and a big advantage of it over Microsoft Office, is WordPerfect’s ability to work with PDF files. PDF files are not really meant to be edited once created, but we very often get PDF files that need to be reworked. WordPerfect can help you accomplish this without retyping everything.
Say you get a PDF from a client and need to make substantial changes to it. You can simply open the PDF in Word Perfect. Just click on File and then Open PDF. You may be asked to have Wordperfect recognize text. In a PDF file, text can be actual text that the program is capable of showing you and letting you edit. Importing this is easy. Sometimes, however, text is actually a picture of text, meaning that a program cannot identify individual words that we can read on the page just fine.
WordPerfect is giving you the option of allowing it to use its built-in OCR recognition to look at the scanned images and try to recognize these pictures of words and convert them to text. There may also be actual pictures on the document that contain text as well and there is also an option to recognize and extract text from those images.
OCR is a very processor intensive function. So if you have a document that is hundreds or thousands of pages and OCR scan could take quite a few minutes, even hours. If you have a longer document you may want to do a few pages at first to make sure it's working okay. If it is a very long document you may want to let the OCR run overnight. Of course, time will vary depending on how powerful your computer is and how long the document is.
Depending on the quality and character of the original document, you may lose a great bit of the formatting. OCR is also not alway accurate, so plan to proof and correct what the computer has done.
When you open the PDF document, you are no longer working on the original document. Once the document opens, it is a WordPerfect document, not PDF anymore. You may edit the document just like you would any other. Once complete, you may save it as a WordPerfect document, or convert it again as a new PDF document.
I recommend saving the document as a WordPerfect document until you are absolutely certain that no further edits need to be made. Saving it as a PDF and then opening it again for editing requires two conversions which can in some cases corrupt the document. Once the document is absolutely complete and ready to be sent out as a final document, it is fine to publish it to PDF. You can do this directly in WordPerfect, or use a print to PDF function such as bio PDF. I have found that the publish to PDF function in WordPerfect creates a smaller and more efficient document, So if you are already in WordPerfect I recommend using its publish tool as your preferred PDF creation tool.
Final Documents should normally go out as PDF
I also recommend sending final documents to any outside parties in PDF format rather than WordPerfect or other editable formats. If there is no reason for the receiving party to edit the document, then it is best that they are unable to edit it. Also, PDF ensures that the recipient will see the formatting as you expected. If they receive a word processing file, it may display differently for them that it does for you.
In fact, I almost never recommend sending a WordPerfect document to anyone outside the firm. WordPerfect is not commonly used. Although WordPerfect documents can be opened and converted by MS Word, most people cannot open the file simply by clicking on it. This can lead to confusion. Opening WordPerfect in Word can also sometimes lead to document corruption or formatting problems. PDF is much more universal, and for reasons above a better option for final documents.
Collaboration is best done Online
If you are collaborating on a document with someone else, I find Google Docs a much better option than WordPerfect, MS Word, or anything else. You can share the document with anyone in the firm or outside the firm, and work on it together in real time. Google also tracks which author made what changes to the document and when. Google does not have many of the advanced tools for formatting that you have in WordPerfect, but it is the best for collaboration. See my earlier blog post on Google Drive for more on this.
Once collaboration is complete, you can finish the document by saving as RTF and then working in WordPerfect to do whatever advanced formatting you want. I don’t recommend using this with letterhead as it can be tricky to add the letterhead template to an existing document. But for other documents, working on it collaboratively in Google Docs, then moving to WordPerfect for the final formatting can work well. Of course, if no advanced formatting is needed, simply save as PDF directly from Google Drive.
Metadata
Another useful feature of WordPerfect is the option to save without metadata. If you are not familiar with metadata this is information that is saved in your word processing file that is not part of what is seen in the document itself. This can contain information about who worked on the document authored it, modified it, etc. It can also contain information about the different dates that the document was worked or previous names of the document and other information that you may not want someone else outside the firm to know.
Metadata exists in virtually all documents created by a variety of programs, but WordPerfect is one of the few that gives you an easy way to strip out this information. As I said, publishing to PDF is my preferred method for distributing final documents. This will also strip out the metadata. However, if you want to send a document to someone who needs to edit it and that person is outside the firm I consider it prudent to remove the metadata before sending it to them.
Language and Grammar
After you have created a document, you may find it useful to get a second opinion about the language you are using. Even if your language is correct sometimes a second opinion will tell you how to write things more simply or clearly or just make the document read better. WordPerfect has a built-in grammar checker under Tools. You can opt to have WordPerfect check your grammar on the fly (as it does spelling by default) or you may find it preferable to run a quick grammar check once you have completed the document.
Another useful tool along the same lines is the thesaurus. This can help you find a different word that might more accurately describe what you were trying to say, or simply find a different word if you find you are using the same ones over and over again. There is also a built in dictionary to be sure of a word’s definition.
Redactions:
You may have an occasion where you need to send a redacted document to someone. There is an option in Word Perfect under Tools for redaction. Simply highlight the words that you need to be redacted and then save the document. I strongly recommend saving as a new document, or even as a PDF in order to prevent overwriting the original document. Once redactions have been saved they cannot be undone.
File Compare
Perhaps you want to compare document you just created with an earlier version. Assuming you have saved an earlier version you can do this using the compare documents feature. Simply have one of the documents open, then click on File - Documents - Compare and WordPerfect will show you all the differences between the two documents.
Reveal Codes
Sometimes, you are dealing with a document that is formatted in a particular way and you cannot figure out how to change the formatting or get rid of it. The WordPerfect feature called Reveal Codes will show you all of the formatting commands in a block at the bottom of the screen You have the ability to go in and remove or alter those formatting features from within that box.
A more radical step, if you want to remove absolutely all formatting from the document is to save the document as plain text. But I'm warning you now, if you do this it will really remove ALL formatting, bold face, italics, font size, links, line spacing, page numbers, justification, etc. will be stripped out of the document. Also gone are any embedded pictures, tables, etc. So you don't want to do this unless you really want to make some serious changes to the way the document is formatted. I have sometimes found this option helpful when I have a document that is hopelessly messed up in many location. This fix means I have to redo all of the formatting from scratch.
The help desk also has a special macro that can strip out certain formatting that is causing trouble while leaving other formatting alone. The help desk is a good resource for you if you run into this problem.
Tables
There may be times when you find it helpful to create a table in a document. A table is essentially a small embedded spreadsheet in the document. You can create a table by clicking on the Table option on the toolbar and you get how many rows and columns you wish to create and then simply creating it. You can then fill in all the cells as you wish. If you have found that you've made the table the wrong size it is easy enough to add or delete rows or columns from a table that has already been generated.
Hint: if you already have a spreadsheet created with another program, you should not have to recreate it as a table to insert it. Just copy and paste the portion of the spreadsheet you want into your WordPerfect Document. WordPerfect should recognize it and insert it as a table with all the data already in place.
Insert Picture
You may also have occasion to insert a picture into a document. This is easy enough by clicking on insert and graphics / pictures, then from File select the file you wish to insert. It should show up in the document and allow you to adjust for size.
Nonstandard Characters
You may at some point have a need to insert a character that does not appear on your keyboard. For example, a paragraph symbol (¶) or section symbol (§). From the top toolbar, click Insert, then Symbol, and you will see a wide variety of menus that show you any number of useful symbols. Simply select the characters you wish to insert and press the insert button. If you have the standard “lower” toolbar in WordPerfect, you may already have the Symbol feature available there with one click.
If you want to speed up the process for symbols that you use repeatedly you could also simply memorize the numerical code for commonly used symbols. For example, I know that pressing the Alt button and typing 21 on the numeric keypad will insert the section symbol: § into my document. You might want to consider creating a ShortKey for it or QuickWors, which brings me to my next topic
QuickCorrect and QuickWords
QuickCorrect works much like ShortKeys, although it typically does not use a hotkey so can be a little faster for the typist looking to save every keystroke. If you open QuickCorrect on the Tools menu you will see that it already has a number of things listed there for example teh will automatically correct to the. If you have other words you regularly misspell, typing them in here along with the correct spelling will prevent you from having to correct it manually later. Just make sure the misspelling is not another word or part of a word or you may find yourself “correcting” things you did not want corrected.
QuickWords works in a similar way, but is used for items other than misspellings. You could also add unusual characters for quick insertion. For example, add a QuickWord for “Sec.” to be changed to the section symbol § for you.
Important warning here is that we're perfect we'll make that replacement EVERY SINGLE TIME it sees that. Therefore if you ever want to have what you originally typed show up as exactly that in the document, do not add it to QuickWords. You might want to find a cheat like typing “Sec..” (with two periods) to create the section symbol. That way, you can type Sec. when you want that, and just add the extra period when you want the symbol.
Generally we recommend using Shortkeys rather than Quickwords for most of the things that you want to be changed automatically. The reason for this is that Shortkeys works across a wide variety of applications. Your Shortkeys are not limited to use in WordPerfect. QuickWords is limited to this one application.
Further Help
This is just a smattering of the many features built into WordPerfect. If you are interested in learning more, I recommend the following:
In WordPerfect, Click on Help, then Corel Tutor to view a wide variety of helpful tips on how to do certain things.
You may also find WordPerfect Universe, a user based site, helpful for tips or answers to your questions.
