WordPerfect Office X4

WordPerfect Office X4 is an office suite which includes the WordPerfect word processor; the Quattro Pro spreadsheet application; Presentations; the Visual Intelligence data analysis software; WordPerfect Lightning, a Web-connected note-taking app; and WordPerfect Mail for managing e-mail.

The core WordPerfect Office applications support an impressive range of file formats, including Open Document Format (ODF), the very oldest WordPerfect versions, and a few ancient Microsoft Office formats that even Microsoft doesn't support anymore. Most important, WordPerfect Office can open the latest XML file formats from Office 2007 (those with the -x extensions, like .docx, .xlsx, and .pptx).

One of the most hyped new features in WordPerfect Office is its PDF support, which goes several steps beyond what Microsoft Office provides, including a host of additional options for configuring PDF creation, allowing an author to control details like font subsetting, picture compression, PDF compatibility level, and even password-protecting a document.

Impressively, this WordPerfect Office version introduces an ability to use optical character recognition when attempting to read PDFs that contain scanned-in images instead of text. This feature it's not perfect, but no other office suite offers anything close.

Nevertheless, WordPerfect keeps its best features of older versions and adds enough new ones to keep current and new users satisfied.