POINT! for WordPerfect (and Apple too)
I'm not one for WordPerfect, having always been a Word user. But I certainly have a lot of respect for it - it's a great word processor, it's been around a long time, people love it and know how to use, right? Well, what I really love about WP/Corel are the folks behind it. Their presence in and generosity toward the legal community is unwavering. I have WPX3 because they gave away copies at TECHSHOW this year and they also gave us 150 copies to distribute to the New Orleans, New Law tech conference. They pretty much rock.
Soooo...last night I was tinkering in WP (yep, another hot Saturday night for me) - when I noticed that there's a built in PDF Publisher in WordPerfect (and also a Publish to EDGAR option). Cool. Looks like this feature is built into WP9 and versions after.
Here's a link to one Barry MacDonnell's WordPerfect Toolbox and a page on Tips for Printing to PDF. Check it out for more details. His site is loaded with WP tips as well as links to "Other WP Sites."
Okay, so I'm thinking that IF you have both Word and WP and IF you don't have Acrobat, you COULD open your .doc file in WP and print it to PDF from there. Tricky.
Are you a Mac user? Then you probably already know that Acrobat comes built into Apple's OS and anything you can send to your printer you can send to print as a PDF. Awesome.
So WTF, Microsoft? Well, check this out. Microsoft has it's OWN version of PDF that debuted in Office 2003. It's called Microsoft Document Imaging (.mdi). You can use it as long as you know the recipient of your files is an Office 2003 user (hmmm, have you ever asked your client what software they have available before just shooting off files to them? Perhaps some communication about technology is in order!) . This is a good option for firms or offices that are all on the same system and you know what everyone has on their system. I've used it several times and it works great. For example, I got an eFax - I have the free version, so it only delivers faxes in its proprietary format - you have to have the eFax viewer to open a file. I wanted a client to see the fax so naturally I wanted to send it in PDF. Well, I don't have Acrobat on the laptop I was traveling with that day but I knew she is using Office 2003; I printed the eFax to MDI. I emailed it to her, she opened it and even printed it. Try it for yourself.
Read more about MDI files at these links.
