right now i have word perfect. it is crappy so i am getting microsoft word. when i get the disk, do i just instal it or do i have to do something special? will i still be able to save all of my documents that i have created using word perfect?
-thanks so much

Hi sharpie,

Just install away, Word Perfect and MS Word are two entirely different programs from two different companies so installing MS Word will not affect anything you have created with Word Perfect.

yeah but i dont want wordperfect on my computer anymore. so if i delete word perfect and install mw will i still be able to open the documents that i already have saved?

Nope, you are going to run into some problems because they are two different formats and from what I have read in these next two links Word Perfect (WP) looks like a format to be avoided if you want your documents to be readable by other word processing softwares. I don't blame you for wanting to go to something else.

MS Word can open your WP documents but you will have some formatting issues which you will have to work through manually. This link provides a good explanation of why you are going to have problems with your WP documents.

http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/General/WordPerfectConverters.htm


While this site has information on some of the problems you will face and can help you in your task. Read this site carefully and you should be able to get through this alright.

http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/wptoword.html

Reading some of the above web site I really think you are going to have your work cut out for you in converting your old WP documents to something else but will be worth the effort in the end.

ok thank you so much. i dont have that many. do you think that it would be easier to keep wp on the computer just so i can open the documents that i already have created and just use mw for my new documents. or should i just remove wp?

Or you could copy and paste each WP document into the new MS Word you will install, and save them in the new format. Once you have all the old WP documents converted and saved in Word format. You can then delete WP if you wish

so just copy and paste? that sounds ok

I hope it is just that simple a fix but somehow I doubt it is going to be. I think you are still going to have the formatting issues to deal with. Let us know how it works out and remember my links above if copy and paste does not work.

Good point on the formatting issues, if the documents are highly formatted. However if they are lightly formatted mostly text documents it should be rather straight forward, with minor difficulty.

there are just a few papers i had to type.

I am glad you only have a few files to deal with so you should be able to retype them if thats what it takes.

Be sure to post back and let us know what happens when you get MS Word so this post may help others who have the same issue.

I would just copy your document then after Microsoft Office is installed, open a new Word document. Then paste it, then save the document.

There you go.

yeah thats what i was thinking, but they said i might have formating issues...

ok i got the disks and i copied and pasted one document and it worked fine, but it is going to take a while to do that to all of them

Glad it worked out.

How well it works does depend on the level of formatting. Stuff like tables, endnotes, footnotes and sections do not transfer well. I've had some considerable nightmares with some of my documents. I actually had to split some of them into several documents, fix the formatting on each individual, then copy and paste into what would be my final version.

Orange Blossom

An additional option. This is a method I've used. Change the extension on the WordPerfect files from wpd to doc The files will then open in MSWord. Note, there will be some formatting issues with more complex documents.

Orange Blossom