ANSWER: First, even if you decide to upgrade, wait a while! Unless you have so much time or are a masochist, give Microsoft and Corel time to work out the kinks and repair the worst bugs before installing their programs on your computer. Often, it is hard to know when it’s safe to purchase and install a newer version. Depending on the company and its history, I usually wait until at least one and possibly more maintenance releases are issued for the new version before using it. Even then, I give it a test period by installing it on one computer and working with it before converting my office and data to the new product.

The best way to monitor the status of maintenance releases is to periodically check each vendor’s web site, where you usually can download the maintenance release. For many companies, you will need the product’s license or serial number. Also, be sure to know the version you are using and the operating system. For example, when you update your virus-checking software you need to know which engine you are currently using.

You will want to set up bookmarks (in Netscape) or favorites (in Microsoft Internet Explorer or America Online) for the locations of software providers. To keep the critical information you need close, edit the bookmark properties to add any information the vendor requires.

Place the cursor on a bookmark, press the right mouse button and choose properties. A dialog box with room for comments appears on the screen. Put any vital information, such as the serial number, special user ID, or a vendor-supplied password in the comments section. Then, when you access their site, all the information you need will be at your fingertips.

Getting upgrades

If you have access to the Internet from your office, it’s easier to maintain your software. Many companies have maintenance files that do not fit on a diskette. Often the files are available as .ZIP or .EXE documents.

An .EXE file means it has been compressed but will automatically execute when run. To run an .EXE file in Windows 95, 98 or NT, go to Windows Explorer and double click the file. Or, go to the Start button, choose Run, and select browse to find the .EXE file on the computer. It’s a good idea to set up a folder on your computer for files you downloaded (that is, taken from somewhere else and copied to your computer). If you use America Online (AOL), the software the company provides establishes a download folder within the AOL folder.

If the vendor supplies a .ZIP file, after downloading the file, you need a utility such as WinZip to decompress it and install it on the computer. Most often the vendor’s web site will instruct you how to get the zip utility. One good site for programs such as WinZip is www.download.com.

Typically, these programs are shareware, which means you can obtain a copy, but the designers urge users to pay a small fee for its development.

Programs like WinZip also can be useful to modem or e-mail large files to clients or attorneys in your office. You can compress large documents before sending them. You can either send it as a .ZIP or .EXE file, which take less time to transmit. Of course, this means the recipient also must have a zip program if you choose the .ZIP format.

Microsoft Word

What kind of new features have been added to Word and WordPerfect?

Microsoft Office 2000 boasts Internet formatting from within each application. Office 2000 now allows you to save your Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, or PowerPoint presentations directly into Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) format — the language used by Internet web browsers such as Explorer and Netscape’s Navigator or Communicator.

In revamping Office 2000, Microsoft simplified the steps to publish documents to your firm’s web site. For the average lawyer in a small- or medium-sized firm this sounds like a major “so-what?” feature. The real power of this improvement is for firms that are setting up or have set up an Intranet. While I have yet to see smaller firms use an Intranet, there are obvious benefits for medium- and large-sized firms. The ability to have firm policy documents such as health benefits, holiday schedules and office procedures available to all employees using the familiar interface of a web browser is a major improvement over paper booklets. Taken further, a forward-looking firm could collaborate on legal research for specific practice areas or share form documents through the Intranet. While both current versions of WordPerfect and Word had tools for converting documents to HTML and Extensible Markup Language (XML), the Word tools were difficult to use effectively. With Word 2000, Microsoft is catching up with the “publish to Internet” option available in WordPerfect 8.

An extra bonus in the new WordPerfect suite is the Trellix program used to create and manage longer, more-sophisticated web pages. For many firms, the combination of these tools will allow them to create, publish, and manage their web pages.

One of the most-intriguing new features in Word 2000 is the ability for the applications within the suite to fix themselves. While it is too soon to tell if it will relieve many of the general protection faults (GPFs) that seem to crash computers during critical moments, the Microsoft suite claims it is intelligent enough to fix itself as you work. For instance, if, as you start PowerPoint, the program determines there are missing files, it will automatically find and install them.

The suite also has added “collect and paste,” which enhances the Windows clipboard by letting you copy up to 12 separate chunks of text or graphics and paste them separately or all at once into other parts of the Office suite. While Microsoft is touting this as a major advancement, users of the current Corel WordPerfect 8 Legal Suite will realize they have a similar capability through the suite’s Nexlaw component. In fact, most of the Word advertised features are ones already are available in WordPerfect.

Another new Word feature is “floating tables.” The innovation allows you to create tables that can have their position specified and text placed around them. Microsoft also enhanced the tables function to allow for diagonal lines within cells. While my bias toward WordPerfect may be showing, the diagonal-line option was added in WordPerfect 8 and its tables always allowed you to place them in specific positions. Even though in WordPerfect you can’t add text to the right or left of a table, the program always allowed you to treat that area as another cell with the lines around it removed.

Word also responded to Corel’s shadow cursor, added in version 8, by adding “click-n-type.” Both features let you click anywhere on the page and start typing rather than pressing the Enter key multiple times or centering to get to the location of the page where you want to add text.

Microsoft also added a font-preview feature which allows you to see the font before selecting it — another feature already available to WordPerfect 8 users.

WordPerfect upped the ante by creating a real-time preview feature available to all programs in the suite. Here’s a way to help visualize this function: Imagine you are working on a document and decide to change the font for part of the document. In pre-2000 versions, you had to select the text, choose a font, and apply it to the document. If you didn’t like the results, you could undo it. With real-time preview, instead of seeing a preview of the font on general text, you see it in your document’s text.

You can preview as many options as you want by hovering the mouse over the fonts in the list and selecting one by clicking inside the document. To leave the text unchanged, simply move the mouse away from the font list.

You might be thinking, “So what? I don’t change fonts that often.” The best part about the real-time preview is that it works with almost every feature of every program within the suite. You can see different line styles on tables, see a document with or without columns and so on — all without committing to the final result until you find the style you want.

Another new feature in Word is an automatic language detector. If you add a foreign phrase or name, the detector should recognize it and offer appropriate spell check and grammar options.

One of the most-intriguing new features in Word is the addition of personalized menus. Essentially, Word tracks the functions you use the most and rearranges the program menus so they are more prominent. Features that are not used 95 percent of the time are placed at the bottom of the menus.

The trainer in me cringes at the thought of this improvement. Knowing where to find features helps people get their work done. If the features get shuffled because they are used sporadically, users will be confused or frustrated. Additionally, this feature promises to make each person’s menu different within the same office. While it sounds like a wonderful enhancement, I suspect most offices will turn it off.

Corel’s WordPerfect

Not to be outdone, Corel beat Microsoft to the market by releasing its upgrade a few weeks earlier. Corel WordPerfect Office 2000 now includes better conversion of Word documents. The folks at Corel realized there are people who don’t use their product and made it easier for them to share documents with those who use a competitor’s program.

WordPerfect also made it easier to scroll through documents. Moving through large documents by pressing Page Down or continually clicking on the scroll bar can often cause finger cramps. The Microsoft Intell mouse adds a small scroll-wheel between the left and right buttons. Corel created an Auto scroll tool which lets you quickly move through a document without using the arrow keys, scroll bars, or a special mouse.

Law firms representing publicly held companies will find the ability of the Corel 2000 version of WordPerfect to convert documents to meet the Securities and Exchange Commission’s electronic filing requirements most helpful. The latest upgrade allows you to save documents directly into the EDGAR format — a tagging system adopted by the SEC for submission of all paper files such as tender offers and 10-K statements. In previous versions, adding the tags was tedious. While there are still some limitations in the EDGAR conversion, most of the pain is gone.

Another helpful utility added to WordPerfect is the ability to convert documents to the Adobe Acrobat format. Adobe allows anyone to view a document as it was published — whether or not they have the needed fonts on their system. All the recipient needs is Acrobat Reader, which can be downloaded free from the Adobe site, www.adobe.com. To make larger documents available on your firm’s web page, the .PDF format is the preferred choice.

Many federal courts now rely on the Acrobat format to electronically submit court papers. Acrobat also is ideal for clients to see documents the way you formatted them, regardless of what program they use.

The latest Corel WordPerfect suite recognizes most of the business world uses one of the Microsoft Word flavors. At its height, WordPerfect was used in over 70 percent of law offices. Today, its legal market share has inched down to about 60 percent.

WordPerfect has improved its conversion utilities so Word documents can be edited without losing much data or formatting. The need to share documents with clients has been one of the most-compelling reasons to switch from WordPerfect to Word. While the conversions continue to improve, there are some functions that don’t convert elegantly.

A white paper details which features will convert and the limitations because of differences in the companies’ approaches to document production.

To distinguish itself from Microsoft Word, which changed its basic document format several times during the last few years, Corel is emphasizing its backward compatibility by maintaining the same basic document and macro formats since version 6.1 for Windows. To further assist people who want to use WordPerfect while their colleagues use Word, Corel included within each application menus and tool bars for its competitors. For instance, you could make Quattro Pro, the Corel spreadsheet, look and behave like Lotus 1-2-3 or Microsoft Excel by choosing a different menu, toolbar and command set. WordPerfect 2000 continues to offer the PerfectScript macro language but now also supports Microsoft’s Visual Basic.

Virus susceptibility

One issue continues to plague the Microsoft suite — its vulnerability to viruses. That’s because Word documents can incorporate macros created by Visual Basic. Unbeknownst to the person opening the file, macros can be run automatically. If a virus attaches to a Word file, it uses the same technology as the macro to damage the computer. While some of the viruses can be relatively benign, some recent viruses have cost large corporations millions of dollars and inconvenienced employees whose e-mail had to be turned off until the system was cleaned.

Even though Corel has added support for Visual Basic, its structure and the way macros work is different and should be less-vulnerable to viruses.
What about switching from one word processing program to the other?
You need to look closely at your own firm and weigh each factor.
Word handles documents differently than WordPerfect. Everything is determined by the styles and sections you are in.

The compatibility with other programs you are using also can sway your decision. For example, if you use a case-management program to merge data into documents, you should check whether you have more flexibility with Word or WordPerfect since there are differences in the number of fields each can handle. WordPerfect has greater capacity.

If you use only 10 percent of your word processor’s features, it isn’t going to matter much whether you choose Word or WordPerfect. If you and your staff stay with the basics of document-creation and rarely, or never, use footnotes, headers, footers, tables, columns, macros, or create merge forms, it doesn’t matter whether Word or WordPerfect is your choice, since those features are almost identical.

Where the programs start to part company is in the details and advanced features. For people who can’t live without WordPerfect’s reveal-codes function, converting to Word can be frustrating. For those who never even noticed WordPerfect had codes to revel and edit or even understood them, conversion will be less-traumatic.

Carol L. Schlein is president of Law Office Systems, a Montclair-based training and consulting firm assisting small- and medium-sized law firms with technology. She formerly chaired the Computer and Technology Division of the ABA’s Law Practice Management Section and is an author of The Lawyer’s Guide to Timeslips, published by the ABA. She can be reached at carol@losinc.com.

Questions for Carol Schlein on law office technology may be faxed to New Jersey Lawyer at (732) 750-0010 or mailed to “Law Technology Questions,” New Jersey Lawyer, 485B Route 1, Suite 100, Iselin, N.J. 08830.