Leaving WordPerfect

WordPerfect has been the firm's primary word processor since before most folks even had computers. Over the years, WordPerfect's market share has dwindled to the point where it is almost an afterthought in the current market.  Even in the legal field, where WordPerfect dominated for longer than most others, it has become a small minority.

One reason the firm has remained with WordPerfect for so long is that as a word processor, it still beats the industry leader, MS Word by virtually any measure.  I still consider WordPerfect superior to Word as a stand alone product.

The problem is we don't live in a world of stand alone products anymore.  People expect their software to integrate better with other things, including online services, document management systems, and other programs.  Further, people want seamless compatibility with other companies, such as other firms or clients, almost all of whom now use MS Word.

As a result, the firm is planning to make the move from WordPerfect to MS Word.  There will be no immediate conversion, however.  For the last couple of years, we have been making MS Word available on request while installing WordPerfect for all by default.

Rather, the firm soon will install MS Word by default and make WordPerfect available on request.  By "MS Word" I actually mean the full standard version of MS Office, which includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. We will be using Office 365, which not only provides the Office software, but also provides a range of online services as well.

For now, if you still wish to use WordPerfect, we will continue to install it, if requested.  However, over the next few years, the firm may be moving to other systems that will make WordPerfect more difficult to use and more cumbersome for saving and retrieving documents.

I appreciate the fact that MS Word can be complicated, does not have all the features of WordPerfect.  We will transition to Word over a long time, giving everyone plenty of time to get up to speed with MS Office.  Bode has held several classes on basic MS Office use, and will continue to hold more in the future.  If you need the help, I strongly recommend you participate.

MS Word is capable of opening WordPerfect files, just as WordPerfect can open MS Word files.  However, going back and forth can cause formatting problems, and often leads to document corruption.  If you are working with a group that shares the same documents, or an attorney and secretary both work on the same documents, I strongly recommend that you decide among yourselves whether to use Word or WordPerfect. Going back and forth between both will cause problems.

We are just beginning to embark on this significant change.  We have only recently completed a test group using Office 365.  So far the feedback is that is has been a great change.  I am, of course, always open to constructive feedback about any change or policies as my goal is to have the technology available to make your jobs easier.

Thanks.

Controlling Your Document Sizes

I frequently hear from frustrated attorneys and staff about difficulties emailing documents that are beyond the 25 MB attachment size limit in Gmail.  How can a few dozen pages go over the limit when you sometimes receive documents that are hundreds of pages long and well within the limit?

The answer is that the way you create a document can GREATLY affect its size.  To demonstrate this, I created a sample document that was 19 pages long.  In WordPerfect, the document was only 61 kb (that's roughly 0.06 MB).  At that rate, I could get nearly 8000 pages into a document that would be under the 25 MB limit.

But we often want to convert a document to PDF.  When I used the "publish to PDF" feature in WordPerfect, the document size grew to 104 kb.  It is larger, but still plenty of room for thousands of pages. Rather than use the "publish to PDF" I made a new PDF using the bioPDF printer that lets you create a new PDF from any program.  BioPDF was more efficient and created a new document that was 90 kb.  BioPDF also does a better job of stripping out metadata.  This not only saves on size, but can also help you to keep data related to the creation of the document from the recipient.

Next, I printed out my document and then scanned it from a network copier.  Scanning will always drastically increase document size because it turns the text in the document into an image.  Images require much more space than text.  It also makes the document less useful because you cannot do word searches, or copy and paste text from the document.  My scanned file increased the document size to just over 1.1 MB (1142 KB).  The document size was 12.7 times larger than the one I created using bioPDF.

Using a network copier to scan document is not even the worst method.  Scanning on one of the desktop scanners most of use have at our desks is an even worse way to go.  The desktop scanners use a less efficient compression tool for the images.  So, in addition to taking a much longer time for the scan to complete, you also end up with a much larger file.  I scanned my test document on a HP Laser Jet 1536 printer/scanner as a black & white document and at 200 dpi.  The same document as before had now ballooned to about 8.6 MB (8595 kb).  This one 19 page document is now roughly 1/3 of my Gmail attachment limit.

Even worse, I scanned the document a second time as color and 300 dpi.  This was not necessary as the document itself was simply black lettering on white paper, but the scanner must use more space just for the possibility of of color.  In this case, my document was almost 11.3 MB (11,253 KB) or almost 1/2 of my Gmail attachment limit for a single 19 page document.  It is also more than 125x the size of the same document created with bioPDF.

Desktop scanners are a convenience if you are doing a small scan, such as a letter or a receipt.  If you have larger documents, even 10 or 20 pages, it makes more sense to scan from the network copier, or send to Reliable.  Your documents will end up roughly 1/10th the size you get on the desktop scanner.

If you are starting with an electronic version rather than just paper, a much better option is to use the print to PDF function using bioPDF (or its predecessor BullzipPDF - or any other PDF printer you might have). This will almost always create the most efficient PDF document you can get.

If you already have document in electronic format, printing it out and then scanning is about the worst thing you can do.  You create a much larger document, and have a less useful document.

Some people prefer to scan because they want to sign a document, then scan the whole document with the signature. Rather than do this, I recommend keeping a scanned image of just your signature on your computer. You can import this image into a WordPerfect document, then print to PDF.  Another option is to add your signature as a custom stamp in PDF Xchange Viewer or Editor and simply add your signature to an existing PDF document.  Either method will keep your document MUCH smaller than printing and scanning the entire document.

In summary, when creating a PDF, use a print to PDF method.  Using network copier/scanners are bad and using your desktop printer/scanner is really bad.

Advanced WordPerfect

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.

If you prefer, there is a wide range of “how to” videos available at Brainstorm.

You may also find WordPerfect Universe, a user based site, helpful for tips or answers to your questions.

Editing MS Documents Online

Microsoft remains the de facto standard for editable documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.  Working with MS formats, however, can be problematic if you do not have MS Office.  Fortunately, there are several solutions:

Chrome Extension for Google Docs

Google will allow you to view any MS documents, such as Word or Excel.  You can also download them, but cannot allow you to edit them directly in Google Drive.  There is, however, a fix for that.  There is a Google Chrome Extension that will allow you to edit Word, Excel, or PowerPoint documents in Google Drive.  If you would like to get this extension, click here.  Make sure you are doing this using your Chrome Browser. These extensions will not work if you are accessing Google Drive from Internet Explorer or some other browser.

Creating MS Documents in Drive

If you are creating a new document you can do in Google Drive using the native Google format.  When done, you can download the document to your computer.  One of the options is to download the document as a Word, Excel, or PowerPoint document.   Once downloaded you can send the document to others who need that format.

Office Online

In an earlier post, I discussed how to open up a free personal account with MS Office 365.  This can also be helpful, especially if you are already comfortable operating with the MS Office interface.  Still, it involves downloading an email attachment to your computer, then uploading it again to MS Office online.  So the process takes longer than simply using Google Docs.

LibreOffice and WordPerfect

In the offline world, there are also options that don't involve having MS Office installed on your computer.  Both LibreOffice and WordPerfect are capable of reading MS Office documents and saving in that format.  However, they do not do a perfect job.  Changing document formats sometimes messes up how the document appears.  There are also instances of document corruption.  LibreOffice seems to do a much better job with MS documents than WordPerfect, but there can be problems with both.  Also, because LibreOffice is open source, you are free to download and install it on as many computers as you like without working about licensing restrictions.

Thoughts on WordPerfect vs. MS Word

Margolis Edelstein remains a WordPerfect office.  We have debated for years whether to make the switch to MS Word.  I thought I would make today's post about my thoughts on why we continue to use WP and whether MS Word might be in our future.

How we got here

Law firms tended to be early adopters of word processors back in the 1980s.  At that time, WordPerfect dominated the market.  As a result, law firms remain the largest users of WordPerfect still today.  Yet most of the world has moved to MS Word.  Wordperfect market share is only a small fraction today.  MS began to dominate the Word Processor market in the early 1990's by successfully bundling Word with other powerful programs, such as Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook.  It aggressively marketed its products and pushed ahead.  At this same time, WordPerfect drifted.  It took forever to get out a decent Windows version of the product.  Most WP users were still using the DOS version in the late 1990's.  The product was sold to three different companies within a few years, leaving it without a coherent long term plan.  As a result, Microsoft won the war decisively.

WordPerfect still wins in a comparison of features.

What MS Word never did, in my opinion, was develop a word processor superior to WordPerfect.  Even today, WP has many features that Word does not, including oldies like "reveal codes" to newer additions like its ability to work well with PDF documents and wipe metadata from files.  By contrast I cannot think of anything MS Word can do that WP cannot, other than read and save MS Word files better.

Reasons I don't like MS Word

There are other reasons I prefer WordPerfect to Word.  For one, Microsoft had made huge changes to the user interface over the years, requiring a great deal of retraining for employees.  This means periods of lower productivity and increased training costs.  By contrast, WP makes relatively minor changes to new versions.  Users are easily able to jump several versions ahead, and pick up rather quickly to the few minor changes that exist.  That cannot be said for MS Office.

Similarly, the format of a WP document has remained the same too.  Whether you use WP 7 or 17, accessing files created by newer or later versions works seamlessly.  That cannot be said for MS Word.  As a result, upgrades of MS Office become more difficult.  You need to upgrade the entire firm or at least an entire office all at once in order to ensure documents created by one person can be accessed by others.

Microsoft is also much more heavy handed with its licensing.  It has threatened the firm several times to required the firm perform expensive and time consuming licensing audits at our own expense, something Corel has never done.  Microsoft also puts far more restrictions on transferring licenses to other computers and other limitations on use.

Microsoft remains more expensive.  MS Office Standard costs almost $400 per seat under its volume licensing program.  Perhaps you are saying to your self "that can't be right, I paid only around $150 for Office."  That would be because you bought the Home and Student version.  It is pretty much the same thing as far as the main components are concerned, but it is a violation of the license terms to use the Home and Student version "for commercial, non-profit, or revenue-generating activities."  So even if you have a version on your home computer, you are violating your license if you do anything for work on it, or anything else related to business or a money making project.  We certainly could not use it in the office.  In truth, the firm uses the "home and business" version which costs around $200, but which also requires us to jump through a series of time consuming hoops every time we install it on a computer.  By comparison, a WP Standard license is about $180, and even less when we can buy an upgrade license instead of a full one.

So why does everyone want Word?

Despite everything I've just said about WP being better than MS Word, if I was starting a new company tomorrow and needed to buy a word processor, I would without question buy MS Word.  The bottom line is that Word dominates the market.  Because all of our clients and other businesses with which we interact use Word, it makes it much easier for us to interact if we also have Word.  Further, many third party programs, such as document management systems or special document utilities are designed to work with MS Word and nothing else.  MS Word documents, as the de facto standard are easily read on just about any platform, including Google Docs, or on your favorite phone or tablet.  You cannot get that universal use with WordPerfect.

Then why hasn't the firm switched?

The biggest factor in remaining with WordPefect is the great cost of change.  And I'm not talking about the cost of licencing 200 or so copies of MS Office.  That is only the beginning.

The firm has decades of files stored in WP format.  The cost of converting all those is likely prohibitive.  More likely we would continue to use both WP and MS Word for a time so that older files could be accessed as needed.

Most of the Staff has used WP for many years as well, they would all need to be retrained on an entirely new system, which would reduce productivity for some time and incur the cost of trainers.  Even the Help Desk staff would need extensive training in order to help others with problems.

Many of the staff have extensive libraries of macros, designed to automate many of their tasks.  There would need to be great time and expense devoted to converting these macros.  WP is even built into some of our basic systems, such as the Associate Review forms used annually.  All those would need to be rewritten as well.

Because of all these hard and soft costs, the firm has been reluctant to make such a great change.  Large conversion costs are hard to justify as an expense, and staff resources are already under stress without adding such a massive project.

Can't we just use both?

Well essentially we are using both now.  We have nearly 100 MS Office licenses distributed among the firm.  Wilmington never switched to WP when it was acquired and uses Word exclusively.  Others use it as a secondary program as needed, going back and forth.

This, however, causes its own set of problems.  sharing documents internally becomes problematic if some are using WP and others Word.  Both programs purport to open those in the other's format, but there are inevitably formatting errors that creep in, as well as an alarmingly  high rate of document corruption.  It is also a drain on help desk resources to remain experts in both programs.  At a time when we are trying to reduce demands on help desk resources, we don't want to require a doubling of their expertise.

If the firm decides to switch, there would likely be a transition period, probably lasting years, where we moved one office at a time, retaining WP on existing computers to give staff time to get up to speed on the new system.  But WP would be phased out over time so we could support only one system.

So where are we going?

I recently did a Poll of attorneys and staff asking about their preferences for WordPefect or Word.  You can click on the link below to see a summary of responses

Poll Results

If you looked at the link you will see that a substantial majority favors moving to MS Word.  For me, that is an important consideration.

If we do make the decision to move everyone to MS Word, we would probably move toward using Office 365.  This is Microsoft's new subscription based plan.  One reason it is making its disk based licensing much more onerous is that it wants to drive users toward a subscription.  I suspect Microsoft may phase out disk based licenses altogether in the next few years, or at least make them so expensive that users have no choice but to accept the subscription model.

Under Office 365's current subscription model we would pay about $100 per user per year.  This would allow you to install office not just on your work computer, but also on a home computer, tablet or phone as well.  This would greatly improve mobile productivity.

Conclusion

For now, these are just my thoughts on the matter.  Approval by the management and partnership for any such change has not been made yet.  With this post, I hope to begin a discussion on how the firm should proceed with such a change.  I value your feedback and thoughts.

Word processing is fundamental to what we do as a firm.  It is probably even more central than email for many of us.  Changing the way everyone works on such a fundamental level is not something I take lightly or that should be started with out careful consideration of all the ramifications.

PDF - how to go paperless

Ok, so we won't be getting rid of paper completely any time soon.  But making use of PDF files can greatly reduce the wear and tear on your printer, cut toner costs, and save a few trees as well.

Why PDF?

Since PDF is a virtually universally used format, there are no problems with anyone being able to open it in other offices, or seeing your file in a way other than the original format you intended.  I recommend this anytime you want to send a document that does not need any further editing by the recipients.

PDF files are not meant to be edited.  They are meant to be final documents.  If you plan to work on the document further or are sending it to others for further editing, please use a different format until the final document is complete.

Creating PDF files

There are several very easy ways to create a PDF.  If you are creating the document in WordPerfect.  There is an option to "publish to PDF" which will create a PDF file for you.  This is a great way to finalize a document, at the point where you don't want the recipient to make changes or look at your metadata.

If you are using Gmail, or Google Drive, you have an option to "save as PDF" as one of the printer options.  This will generate a PDF file saved to your computer.

There are times, however, when we want to create a PDF outside of WordPerfect or Google Apps.  For several years now, the firm has been deploying "BioPDF" on all new computers.  This shows up on your computer as a printer (look in Devices and Printers" in your Control Panel to see if it is there).   Any program that allows printing should allow you to "print" to this device.  Once BioPDF has received the print job, it generates a PDF file and asks you to name it and save it, creating a document that looks as if you had sent it to a traditional printer.  Just like that, you have your PDF.

If you do not have BioPDF installed, call the help desk.  We can help you get it installed.  This program will also generate files in PDF-A format, now required by some courts.  It will also let you generate files in other formats, such as TIFF, which is helpful for use in some other programs.

The last way to create a PDF is using your scanner.  Do not use this option if you already have an electronic version of the document.  Scanning is the worst way to create a PDF.  Unlike the other ways listed above, scanning essentially takes a picture of the document.  This means the file size will be several times larger than if created in other ways.  It also means the document will be much less useful in that one will not be able to search for words or cut and paste from the document.  Obviously, if you have paper, this may be the only way to go.  But if you have an electronic version, use BioPDF to create the file.

Editing PDF Files

The firm's preferred PDF document reader is PDF X-Change Viewer.  Unlike Adobe Reader, PDF-Xchange will let you do far more than look at a document.  You can do pretty much anything you would do with a paper document.  You can draw on it, stamp it with various markings, write notes on the paper, insert or remove pages, highlight, underline, or cross out certain words (assuming the document is not scanned), and many other things.  You can even add a virtual post-it to the document using the "notes" feature.

Perhaps you are reluctant to use PDF, or feel you need to scan because you need to sign a document with your hand written signature.  A better option might be to scan just your signature, then paste that into whatever document you need.  In PDF X-Change, I have my signature, as well as my initials, saved as a stamp.  I can simply stamp my signature on any PDF document, resize it to fit, and then email the signed document as an attachment to the necessary recipients.

There is also a typewriter feature in PDF-Xchange viewer.  Say you have a PDF form.  You can simply put your cursor on the part needed to be filled out, type in your answer, and save your changes.

Fixing PDF files

Let's say you love working with PDF but are being sent PDF documents from someone not as tech savvy as you.  They are scanning their files and emailing them to you.  But you want to have the actual words in the document, not just the pictures.  Not a problem.  PDF X-Change Viewer has an OCR feature (Ocular Character Recognition).  This will scan the images for recognizable words and convert them back into text that can be copied or searched.  This feature was added in a relatively recent version of X-Change.  So if you do not have the feature, call the help desk to get upgraded.

One thing you are not really supposed to do is edit a PDF document.  Once a document is in PDF format, it is considered a final product.  You can mark it up, but you cannot really go in an change the text or do other things you do with a normal word processing file.  With WordPerfect X5 or higher, you can import a PDF document into a new WordPerfect file.  You may lose images and formatting, but it will OCR imaged text.  Once you have the text, you can reformat it the way you like, make whatever changes you like, and then save it again, either as a WordPerfect file, or republish to PDF.  The most current version of WordPerfect (X7) has gotten rather good at this.  If you think you could use this feature, but have an older version of WP, contact the help desk about an update.