Corel Touts Microsoft Compatibility In WordPerfect Office 12

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March 01, 2004 (12:20 PM EST)

Corel Touts Microsoft Compatibility In WordPerfect Office 12

Unwilling to give up the fight against Microsoft Office -- the planet's most dominant business productivity suite -- Corel on Monday unveiled its newest alternative, WordPerfect Office 12, which will ship in late April.

Most of the changes to WordPerfect Office 12 -- which consists of the WordPerfect word processor, the Quattro Pro spreadsheet, and WordPerfect Presentations slide-show maker -- are in the area of increased compatibility with Microsoft Office's Word, Excel, and PowerPoint applications, said Wendy Lowe, the suite's product manager.

"We don't see the increased compatibility as a sign of weakness," she said, "because a lot of it stems from our existing customers who are content with WordPerfect products, but their workflow requires them to liaise with users of Microsoft Office's applications."

Based on its users' feedback, WordPerfect came up with a list of requested changes to its file filters -- the tools which translate WordPerfect documents into Word format, for instance, or Word into WordPerfect -- to make the back-and-forth more seamless. "We talked to existing customers to find out what sort of compatibility issues they were running into," said Lowe.

"They didn't want to see more bells and whistles," she said, "just a lot more compatibility [with Microsoft Office]."

Among the changes to the WordPerfect-Word file filters in version 12 are ones to better handle footnote formatting, more accurately display tables originating in Word, and properly show text wrapped around graphics or photographs, she said. Improvements have also been made to Quattro Pro's and Presentation's file filters to more accurately translate Excel and PowerPoint files, respectively. The enhanced filters take into account the newest version of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint in the Office 2003 bundle.

Another new feature, dubbed the Workspace Manager, is WordPerfect's attempt to trim training time for customers migrating from Microsoft Office.

It allows users to start up a WordPerfect Office 12 session in native WordPerfect mode or in one that mimics, say, Microsoft Word. Choosing the latter, Lowe said, offers access to similar tools, including shortcut keys, within WordPerfect in the same place on menus and toolbars found in Word. "It changes the user interface to emulate Word," Lowe claimed.

Other new tools include a template browser -- called OfficeReady Browser -- which lets users view, sort, and catalog existing templates; and something Corel is calling WordPerfect Wireless Office Suite.

This set of tools, licensed from ZIM Technologies, allows WordPerfect Office 12 users to send SMS (Short Message Service) text messages to mobile phones, and those cell phones to text back to WordPerfect's applications. A salesperson in the field, for instance, could be texted from Quattro Pro, said Lowe, for an update to sales figures, then text back the data, which is automatically integrated into the spreadsheet.

Corel's not out of touch with reality -- it knows that Microsoft Office is the 800-pound gorilla in the suite business -- but it still believes there's a market for a less expensive, simpler suite.

"We're really after the consumer and small- and mid-sized business (SMB) market," said Lowe. "We've found a lot of them are looking to an Office alternative, and getting savvy that there are cheaper alternatives. That's where 12 plays nicely; it has a set of features comparable to, say, the standard edition of Microsoft Office, but it's cheaper."

English-language versions of WordPerfect Office 12 will be available in late April, with French, German, Spanish and Brazilian-Portuguese editions to follow, said Corel. Pricing for the standard edition of WordPerfect Office 12 starts at $299.99, with upgrades available for $149.99 and a special edition for the education market priced at $99.99.

In comparison, the suggested retail price for Microsoft Office Standard Edition 2003 is $399; however, Microsoft also sells the same bundle of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook to consumers under the title Office Student and Teacher Edition 2003 for $149.