Excel Annoyances
Reviewed by Jim Lapointe, SCUG

Written by Curtis Frye Published by O´REILLEY
Cover Price $36.95 (cdn)
This book covers quirks and problems for Microsoft Excel spreadsheet Versions Excel 97, 2000, 2002 and 2003.
This book is a must beside the computer for all but the most experienced Excel users. It has 220 pages of tips, hints and tricks to help you do what you know this program should be able to do. There 394 index headings, many with multiple sub-categories. There are 29 chapters, each dealing with a different aspect of Excel. Upon starting to use Excel Annoyances, I discovered many things that it could do that I hadn´t thought about doing with Excel or a spreadsheet. This book is most definitely not a coffee table book. I would recommend it to anyone who uses Excel for other than pre designed reports and fact sheets.
Good book and not too hard to read
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Corel WordPerfect® OFFICE X3
by Val Conway
My WordPerfect® experience goes back to the days of DOS WordPerfect® 5.1 so I was anxious to see what " Corel WordPerfect ® Office X3 Standard Edition" suite had to offer. The box comes with three CD's: the installation disk; a training disk; and a resource disk with clipart, photos, True Type fonts, Adobe Reader 7 and MS Internet Explorer 6; and a printed User Guide.

Custom installation made it easy to install only the things needed. The training video from Lynda.com was easy to understand and covered the basics but unfortunately not the advanced features, which is what users would need help with most.

I started working quickly but I was soon plagued with crashes. Since I'm on dial-up, I wasn't happy about the 82 Mg Service Pack that I needed but after installing it, I'm glad to report that the crashes have ceased. WordPerfect ® X3: The word processor is the anchor of the suite and has more bells and whistles then the average person will use. Version X3 allows users the choice of running the program in 5 different modes: WordPerfect ® X3, WordPerfect ® Classic 5.1, WordPerfect ® Legal and MS Word. "Reveal Codes" continues to be one of the program's best features. Hovering over each code will show a balloon providing the command name, which saves remembering the codes. As in previous versions, these codes can be turned on and off, their window size can be adjusted and they can even be printed. Using the codes help in locating and fixing problems quickly while fixes take more time in other programs while the users try to blindly find the place the error was written.

The new feature of working directly in Print Preview mode is a great improvement. It means the whole document changes while scrolling through formatting options such as fonts and line spacing. When copying text from another file with different formatting, it can take on the formatting of your document automatically. There are new save and send timesaving features. It is now possible to use "Send To" and have your document saved with a shortcut sent to the desktop or emailed or zipped or printed to a fax directly from WordPerfect®.

Publishing and saving is possible in HTML, PDF, XML and EDGAR (which consists of a long list of formats from Ami Pro to XYWrite). With its new ability of publishing to pdf, Corel has also attempted to provide the option to import and change pdf documents. Unfortunately, it works only for the most basic documents. On the plus side, exporting too many different formats allows others with different word processors to view them using their software. Importing is limited to pdf, doc, rtf, txt, and WordPerfect ® formats. This still makes it impossible to read files from the many other formats. Importing complicated MS Word documents was a hit and miss procedure but most transferred.

"PerfectExpert" contains templates, which give you choices for formatting many types of documents. Most of these templates such as Memos, Calendars, CD case covers etc. are basic but more complicated templates can be purchased from Corel.

WordPerfect ® allows notes to be imbedded in your document for your convenience or sharing for the purpose of editing by others. These comments known as Meta Data can be sent back and forth and when you're done and want to share them with others, the notes in these documents can be deleted with the Meta Data Removal tool, which preserves the original document and saves the cleaned version with a new file name. This is extremely useful for security and privacy. Quattro Pro: Three modes of operation are offered in this Spreadsheet program: Quattro Pro, Lotus 123, and Excel. Quattro Pro's new CrossTab feature creates reports, which summarize data, and is comparable to Microsoft Excel's Pivot table. Charting tools are easy to use and are available for use in WordPerfect ® and Presentations. It also features the PerfectExpert templates, not to be confused with Microsoft's annoying Office Assistant.

The Publishing of the Spreadsheets to pdf files is again a boom to sharing information but importing other formats including Excel isn't perfect probably due to the complexities of macro driven spreadsheets. However, I was happy that it imported my simple old Lotus Revision 9 spreadsheets well.

Corel Presentations: New Features in Presentations are the same as those for the other programs in the suite. Working in Presentation or MS PowerPoint Mode is possible. Creating presentations was easy and especially with the use of the PerfectExpert. Once again, the presentations can be saved in various formats and published to a pdf as well.

Presentations has anti-aliasing (reduction of jagged patterns) for fonts and graphics, and a template browser called Master Gallery. The Graphics are a separate application with more vector drawing and shape tools. "Show on the Go" intrigued me. This feature creates an executable slide show, which can be shared as a standalone presentation with someone who doesn't have Corel Presentations. I had a problem with this feature not saving all my slides to one executable file and still don't have an answer to the fault to that presentation but created others with no problems.

Presentations Graphics X3: Previously an integrated part of the suite it can now also be used as a stand alone program which allows the graphics and photos to be edited and saved in formats that are usable in other programs. WordPerfect ® E-mail: This is a standard e-mail program looking much like MS Outlook. It has built-in indexing which allows searching, R.S. reading, and contains a trainable spam filter which might entice some users to change in order to get full compatibility with the suite.

Pros: WordPerfect ® remains my favourite Word processor due in great part to the Reveal Codes, publishing to pdf and operating in print view. On top of this, it doesn't surprise me by taking over my formatting and annoying me with Office Assistant as MS Word often does. The PerfectExpert templates can be helpful, and Print Mode is a big step forward. QUATTRO PRO imported basic, Excel and Lotus 123 spreadsheets without trouble. PRESENTATIONS allowed the creation of slide shows on the first try.

Cons: A valiant attempt was made to allow the importing and editing of pdf files but only the very basic of documents can be imported correctly and many are just too scrambled to warrant correction. For my use of spreadsheets, QUATTRO PRO works well but is still not as powerful as Excel. This presents problems importing. PRESENTATIONS the text and graphics in "Show on the Go" were not as smooth as those in the original slide show. WordPerfect ® MAIL is only for a basic user unless compatibility with the suite is the main objective.

Service & Support Users get free, unlimited email support, promising a 24-hour response time and 1 free phone call but long distance charges are paid by user. Future phone help with a toll free number can be costly (1 call for $25). I received quick responses to my two e-mail inquiries, however the suggested fix for the "Show on the Go" problem which was to return to factory defaults didn't work and I wasn't entitled to ask the question again for seven days. It was suggested that I phone for help. There is an online "Knowledge Base" but I found it tedious to search and didn't have answers to my questions.

Space prohibits me from going into all the features but for those wanting to learn more I would recommend downloading the Corel WordPerfect ® X3 Reviewers Guide: www.corel.com/content/vpk/wpx3/ WPO_X3_reviewer_guide.pdf Corel also offers a the free 233 Mb trial copy of the suite at their web site under Free Trials.

System Requirements: Windows® XP (Home, Media or Professional Edition, Windows® 2000 or Windows® 98 SE,
128 MB RAM (256 MB recommended) 466
MHZ (Pentium® III or equivalent processor recommended)
575 MB hard disk space for a full installation,
Super VGA, 16-bit colour monitor with 800 x 600 or greater resolution,
CD-ROM drive,
Mouse or Tablet,
Microsoft® Internet Explorer 5.5.
Company Info: Corel Corp., 800-772-6735, www.corel.com
Cost: Full Standard Edition: $249.99 Upgrade: $134.99

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