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| Corel WordPerfect Office X7 Home & Student |
I received a copy of Corel’s WordPerfect Office X7 Home & Student and I am home again in my favorite office suite! Their software is every bit as robust as Microsoft’s, but Corel’s office suite is much easier to use and far less expensive.
This edition includes WordPerfect (a word processor), Quattro Pro (spreadsheet), Presentations (a slide show creator), WordPerfect Lightning (a digital notebook). These are really the things most people need in an office suite. However, different editions of this office suite with more programs are also available to suit your needs.
If you or the intended user of the software is new to office suites, WordPerfect Office X7 is the way to go because the company kept navigation simple. It’s so nice having a bar at the top again with File, Edit, View, and so on! Microsoft took that away and replaced it with tabs that you have to hopefully remember, where did I see that?
This is what the screen looks like when beginning a new document. With this setup, you can start typing and be the creative person you need to be.
In the case of features you use occasionally, WordPerfect won’t be wasting your time making you hunt for them. Corel provided the Find Feature, under Help allowing you to enter even just part of a feature you’re looking for and it takes you directly to it. For some strange reason, Microsoft Word in Office 2010 removed their help section for quick assistance. Instead, Microsoft redirects you to the web, which slows your productivity.
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| Here is what the Find Feature screen looks like. |
I have been using Office Suites for years. The 900-pound gorilla is, of course, Microsoft Office, which I and many of you have. MS Office 2010 is actually installed on my computer. But I don’t use it that much at all.
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| This is a screenshot of MS Office 2010 for you to compare the two. |
Now the program I use and have used constantly for over a decade is WordPerfect. The ribbon bar at the top of the screen is simple and clean. It’s easy as pie to find what you need. No scrolling through tabs to find basic features such as where is the spell checker. Under MS Office 2010, it’s under the Review Tab. In WordPerfect, all you need is to click on Tools where all your “tools” are listed nicely. By the way, the Spell Checker is also an icon on the WordPerfect toolbar.
As to the Grammar checker, MS Word doesn’t cut it. You may be using MS Word thinking that their checker gave you flying colors but I found it was a false sense of security. WordPerfect Office X7 comes bundled with Grammatik, which is phenomenal!
I actually purchased Grammatik as a stand-alone product on my first PC years before Corel acquired the program and included it with editions of WordPerfect. This grammar checker catches a lot of mistakes that you can overlook just as MS Word so often neglects to find.
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| Check out Grammatik. |
If you find yourself lost in MS Office you have to try WordPerfect Office X7 Home & Student!
*Disclaimer: Free products were provided to facilitate this review--not my opinion.*
