Office & productivity software forum: Poll: Which word-processing software do you use?

Unfortunately, MS Word is bundled with new computers. Yes, you are paying for the MS Word on those computers. If you think they are free, think again. As you must know, that is MicroSoft's way of trying to put their competition out of business. Why purchase another word processing program when you already have one on your computer. However, Corel Word Perfect is a much, much cheaper program to purchase and is a better program.

One of the writers to this posting told about the hidden codes in MS Word and no easy way to find them and either replace with another or delete them. That is absolutely no problem with WP.

I havw wrote three very long books and 53 articles for journals magazines and newspapers all on WP. I use my WP to pull up MS Word documents, read them and make changes to them and then save them as a MS Word document to send back to the original writers. No problems at all with WP X-3. I have never had X-3 freeze up on me.

Those who swear by MS Word have never tried another program. Its like those who have only used just the KJV of the Bible. It is NOT the word of God if it is NOT a KJV. They just don't know that the KJV was written just for the Church of England and contains all of their doctrines as instructed by the King of England.

One can download a trial X-3 for free and use all of its features to see if one likes it or not and if so can then purchase it. I would recommend trying it. To be able to use all of the functions and toolbar correctly does take sometime to learn and if successful will never go back to MS Word.

Paradox is available in the X3 Professional edition. I haven't used it much, I'm currently using Access for databases, but will always swear by WordPerfect, Presentations, and QuattroPro. I HATE to admit this, but the Access databases seem to offer me more options I need than Paradox. When I can take the time to play with Paradox more, maybe I'll learn how to use it better than Access.

I have written three books with both Word and Corel Word Perfect on my computer. The latter was clearly superior but, as your last respondent so well puts it, we have no choice about Word as Microsoft not only bundles it in with the computer but also insterts "Hidden Codes" should one wish to convert a document in process from Word to Corel Word Perfect The hideous HCs are devilishly difficult to remove, taking hours and hours of time whilst changing all kinds of defaults like margins, indentations, page numbers, capitalizations, bullets and so on. The Codes are Hidden in the sense that one cannot seem to get to them and when one does get to them they will not change.

I, too, used WP for DOS (from 4.5+ through 6.2), and WP Win through Ver. 9. I had also used PC-Write for DOS before it got more or less overrun by the Windows systems. For me, too, a primary reason for liking WP was the "reveal codes" feature, which MS Word still hasn't caught up with in its "show formatting marks" feature, although it is much better than it used to be. Word still seems to want to do strange and wondrous things with formatting from time to time. However, as has been pointed out by several persons, you sort of have to go with what your employer has made their standard, and that is invariably MS Office. Since I had to use Word at work, I finally broke down and installed it at home as well, and have been pretty much tied to it ever since. I have tried OpenOffice (which is what my church uses), and still have a copy of WP Office 9 at home, but I have given up on using them as other than oddities as I have become quite skilled in Word and Excel and see no particular point in getting equally up to speed in the other products. Perhaps some day, when I "really" retire (I am "retired" ... several times, but still work on contract), I will give one of the freebies another chance as MS Office is definitely a tad pricey when you have to pay for it yourself.

Maggie Miller and I have similar views and experience with WordPerfect. In short, it is clearly superior to MS Word. Whether it is in its use of margins, hanging indents, spacing, inserting graphics, or knowing what is happening to your text, WordPerfect is the choice to make. I, too, have been using it since the early DOS versions. Even though my university has put Office 2007 on all its computers, I have a copy of WP on mine. I write in WP and, when necessary, save it as an MS Word document. If you haven't tried WP, do so. I think that you will like it.

Unless managers can be shown exactly how much time is lost fighting with Word's mysterious, magical and inanely-invisible formatting to get things done, Word will continue to have zero incentive to make the internal codes visible. If they DID become visible, would we learn precisely why Word tends to do things in such a bizarre manner, once you step anywhere outside the lines of the formatting conventions that Word seems to want to impose on you?

Another longtime WordPerfect user, who only converts to Word or touches it when utterly left with no alternatives.

By broad definition you might call MS Office a monopoly, but MS has not limited nor stopped others from trying to develop a product that could even compare with what they have. This poll shows the vast OPTIONS a user has for even word processing. Microsoft offers a free comparable version of a word processor that DOES COMPARE to these other free apps, it's called Word Pad! Have you tried to use the free spreadsheet programs out there? Sure they can get the basic data arranged, but as for having those programs do what Excel can do with that data is another thing.

For those of you who are whining about the change to the toolbar to the ribbons, there are some programs out there that allow you to install the old style of toolbar on your ribbon to when you are afraid to have to learn something new, you can stop the moaning and complaining and use the. I get tired of hearing people complain that they do not like Microsoft or their software. I say find something that works better then you have something complain about. If you find that you cannot cope with the GREAT changes in the new 2007 of Office, there are plenty of books like MS Office 2007 for Dummies that should help you cope.

OO has a free pdf publisher and that sold me. The development cycle is a lot faster, a new upgrade every six months or so, vs. 4 years to get from Office 2003 to Office 2007.

There are two types of "social capital" that MS Word has accumulated. One is the one you mention: it is an extra step to have to convert doc files to some other word processing software, but that doesn't seem like a big deal for most WP tasks: the conversions both ways are usually quite straightforward, at least for simple documents. The other type is the investment of users' time in learning the basic requirements and then all the tips and tricks that turn you from a "sit down and bash out a draft" sort of user to someone who can compile and properly format major publications, do complex mail merges etc. I've been using Word since I abandoned WordPerfect in the early 90s some time and I've just got used to its idiosyncrasies and hidden corners and that's what keeps me hanging in there. From what I hear about Word 2007, if you really do have to poke around for some time to find the equivalent of what you did in Word 2003, that's about the only thing that might make me want to experiment with another package.

While PowerPoint and Excel are more than adequate for their intended purposes, Word is in my view inferior to WordPerfect. The 'reveal codes' process alone makes WP worthwhile. The popularity of Word seems mainly to derive from the fact that Microsoft tends to bundle it with the other programs and in the past provided it 'free' with Windows. I need to keep Word on my computer because it is common enough that I periodically need to edit incoming documents. But otherwise, I find that WP is best. Many of the scientific journals now accept contributions in either program.

My experience is exactly the same, couldn't live without "reveal codes." I've used Word Perfect since it started in Orum Utah. I've tried several times to 'get used to Word' but just couldn't stand it. I remember when Word dropped their version of "reveal codes" saying it wasn't necessary...

NeoOffice is OpenOffice. Just a Java version that looks much more like a native app on OS X than OpenOffice under X11.

While it's not fully compatible yet, I love NeoOffice (OS X Aqua port of OpenOffice) much more than Office 2004 on Mac. I have both, but I rarely use Office just because I like the OpenOffice UI better, and my school uses OpenOffice on their computer, so I can get full compatibility. Also, it's free, saving me shelling out over $100 to contribute to a monopoly, as one reader said. It is a personal choice, but I'd favour OOo.org over MS Office any day.

I just got a new PC and decided to break from tradition and NOT install MS Office. Instead I downloaded OpenOffice.org and so far, so good. The "word" and "excel" components look similar to their MS cousins, and the commands are similar as well. Best of all, OpenOffice can open most existing MS documents. Granted, I don't have any weird charts or formulas, for the most part.

Overall, I'm happy - I've saved $130+ and I've switched away from a Microsoft product...and those are both good things as far as I'm concerned.

I'm sorry, but this poorly written reply offends those of us that are intuitively using applications to their fullest potential, and take advantage of the built in keyboard and navigation shortcuts, not by 'rote', but because we are efficient with our work. I have over 15 years of IT experience and see first hand every day the learning curve that very intelligent people must deal with when transitioning from pre-2007 versions of MS Office suites to the current incarnation.

My company 'requires' the use of MS Office, but I continually install options for people to test and instruct them on how to convert files, export into different formats, etc, and they love the ability to learn something new and compete against the MS machine. So, let's not go and bash users for MS's ability to murder their office suite, simply to make it more visually appealing and supposedly increase productivity.