"I cannot open that document you sent me."

"I cannot open that document you sent me." We used to hear that a lot on the early days of law office computing as several word processors competed for market share. Well, we are starting to hear it a lot more this year.

As many of you know the primary programs in Microsoft Office (Word, PowerPoint and Excel) now have a new and improved file format, which is XML compliant. This can be noticed from the different file name extension; .docx instead of .doc and .pptx instead of .ppt. It can also be noticed when you try to open one of these "new" documents with the older version of the same software and they will not open. Luckily the "fix" for this is pretty simple, just go and download the Microsoft Compatability Pack to allow your Office 2003 version to read Office 2007 files.

When I got Office 2007 at the first of the year, I would try to remember to use "Save as" to save in the old format when I was sending something out by e-mail to make sure I didn't hear back with the "couldn't open" problem. That is surprisingly hard to rememebr. After about the third "can't open" message back, I gave up and set my default to save as the older format. I figured a year from now everyone will have either upgraded or installed the patch. Then I'll change to the new format and, meanwhile, if I need some power hidden in the new format I can always "save as" for that file.

Well, that worked for me and a few days later I was speaking to the Cleveland County Bar in Norman, Oklahoma, and mentioned that as an idea or tips of sorts.

Afterwards I was approached by Hank Ryan, a Norman lawyer and legal technology consultant. Hank smiled and made the comment that I had told them wrong about e-mail the Word files. "Oh?" I said and, since Hank is a high level tech guy, I assumed he was going to inform me about the numerous benefits of the XML file format.

"You're supposed to tell them not to e-mail Word files out at all, not teach them how!" he said. Hank and I shared a chuckle over that one, of course. He's correct. Due to metadata concerns, most lawyers would be much better served by sending files out in PDF format rather than Word. I'd been sending documents that were being jointly drafted to a co-author and had no choice.

But remember Hank's advice, not mine. Avoid e-mailing Word documents out when PDF will do. And have a metadata scrubber to use first when you have to e-mail out Word documents.

But if you are going to stick with the 2003 version of MS Office for a while, go ahead and download the Compatability pack and install it--because other people will be sending you Word documents.

Paste Special (Unformatted): The Next Generation

Copying text from one document to another without also capturing unwanted formatting is something most of us do daily. As a veteran presenter of many "50 Tips" or "60 Tips" programs, I have often discussed with my colleagues that using Edit-Paste Special-Unformatted text to paste into a document has been sort of the "Ultimate Tip" for lawyers. No matter how many times we publicized this technique, there were always two or three people who lighted up in the back of the room when they heard this tip. It was not uncommon to get an e-mail after a seminar that said "Thank you. Learning about paste special was worth the entire price of the seminar."

Well I got that same feeling today when I read a Lifehacker post about removing the formatting in Word documents. The problem with using Paste Special is that it involves clicking on several pull down menus with the mouse, which slows things down. Even if you put a "Paste Special" button on your toolbar, you still have to click on it and then click "unformatted text." You can also use the right click.

But, try this one today. When you have copied some text to your clipboard and want to paste it without formatting into a blank document, use these three keystroke combinations in quick succession: Ctrl + V, Ctrl + A and Ctrl + Spacebar. All done before you can reach for a mouse!

Ctrl + V inserts the copied text (as you all know.) Ctrl + A highlights all text on a page. Ctrl + Spacebar removes all formatting from selected text. Zoom, zoom, zoom.

Now if you are pasting into a document with formatting you don't want to destroy, you cannot use Ctrl + A and have to select the text to be "unformatted" another way. But there's a keyboard shortcut to do this too. Paste the text. Then, while holding down the Shift and Ctrl keys, (conveniently located next to each other) use the Up arrow key to select the text you have just pasted in paragraph by paragraph. So if you just pasted in three paragraphs, you will hit it three times. Then hit Ctrl + Spacebar.

Try this a few times. It is easier to do than to explain. Finally, if you want to know more go to the Lifehacker post. Read the comments. One person says holding down the Alt Key and pressing E, S, U and Enter is even quicker. Another has posted a macro to do this in one keystroke. These tips truly are "the next generation" of Paste Special. We probably all need to create the macro and assign it to a key combination. But for today, I'm just happy to do this more quickly than I did it yesterday.

Note: I follow Lifehacker, but will note that I got this today because Technolawyer dropped it into my inbox with its free Thursday Answers to Questions e-mail. 

2008 Summer Reading List: The Lawyer's Guide to Microsoft® Outlook 2007

I just got my copy of Ben Schorr's new book, The Lawyer's Guide to Microsoft® Outlook 2007, and have only spent a few moments with it. I'm excited about this book personally. I trust Ben's judgment. I was a co-presenter with him on a couple of law practice management panels at the ABA meeting in his home state of Hawaii a couple of years ago. (Yeah, tough duty, I know.) Ben's a law office technology consultant and IT guy who has a talent for explaining things where everyone can understand them. As much as I hate Vista, I think there are a lot of positive things about Microsoft Office 2007. I really like Outlook 2007. We all use e-mail every day now and there are so many Outlook features that most lawyers ignore like flags, tasks and mail merges. If you upgrade to Outlook 2007, someone in your office needs to read this book.

Since I have not read the book yet, I will defer to Laura Calloway's detailed review here. But after reading her review, I'm sure you will want to take a look at this publication if you are an Outlook 2007 user. Oklahoma Bar members who are not ABA Law Practice Management section members can contact my assistant, Sharon Dotson, for discounted pricing on this book.

Another Firm Improperly Redacts Important Documents

Today we have another report of a law firm making a technology blunder that appears to arguably violate a court order on what should be sealed and could adversely impact the client's case. According to an article originally published in the Connecticut Law Tribute, pleadings from a class action lawsuit against GE that the court ordered sealed were improperly redacted before being filed. Apparently anyone can access the pleadings through PACER, copy the redacted material and reveal the "redacted" text by pasting into a Word document. This is a class action sex discrimination suit seeking a potential $500 million recovery. Hopefully by now, the offending documents have been removed and others substituted.

Whether it is improper redaction of documents or metadata disclosure issues, the simple fact is that lawyers have to understand the technology tools that they and their staff are using. Judges are learning new technology lessons due to e-filing and electronic discovery and they will be less inclined to forgive lawyers who make these kinds of errors in the future. Don't try to do redaction without the proper tools, which means using Adobe Acrobat Professional 8 (not a prior version) if you are using Adobe to do it or one of the other redaction tools like the plug-in mentioned in the article.

Several months ago a lawyer called me expecting to be criticized, I think. They were working late on a deadline and became concerned about a few redactions they had to make. They ended up printing the documents, marking through the text with a black magic marker and then scanning/OCR'ing the marked document to create a new PDF. "I guess you think we were pretty dumb, huh?" He said. My response was that I thought they had all slept well that night, knowing that they had erred on the side of caution and were sure they hadn't disclosed any information by accident.

Gotta Love E-mail: Gotta Hate E-mail

What's your reaction when you hear of a lawyer who still doesn't use e-mail, or worse yet, has his secretary open and process his e-mail? It's sort of shocking to hear of a professional who doesn't use e-mail. You think they are backward, behind the times, a faithful follower of brother Ned Ludd or somehow just not a part of modern life.

You just have to love e-mail.  "Here let me send you that document now" and an entire brief from a colleague appears, all ready to plunder. Not interupting someone to ask a simple question. Being able to communicate on a flexible schedule. It's free. The sense of accomplishment when you finish a project and e-mail it off.

But, of course, you also have to hate e-mail. Spam. Receiving a joke for the 10th time. Those people who cannot be trained to consult Snopes.com before passing along some silly urban legend to everyone they know. Spam. Being BCC'd when you don't care. Starting your day with 100 new e-mails in your inbox. Mysteriously vanishing e-mail. Did I mention spam?

So today I'd like to pass along a couple of essays on this topic to you that I read this week. One is from Dan Costa, PC Magazine columnist, gives us "50 Reasons Not to Send that E-mail" and one is from my colleague, Ellen Freedman who writes on "Our Love/Hate Relationship with E-mail." (PDF File)

You see? It's not just you!

Thirty Dirty Tricks for Adobe Acrobat

I listened to a great webinar the other day and almost forgot to share the quite useful materials with you. Adobe's Rick Borstein and Tim Huff did 30 Dirty Tips for Acrobat 8 and I certainly learned some new tips.  If you have Adobe Acrobat 7 or 8, this is worth your time. As regular readers of my blog know, I have now come to the conclusion that Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional is a "must have" tool for the modern law office. Here's Rick's blog post with the link to download their materials, in PDF format, of course. The file is pretty big  (1.83 MB) and so I'd suggest that when you get to the blog post you use "Right click- Save target as .. " rather than opening in a browser window.

Unfortunately, I was not able to be one of the 337 people who listened to the Creating Acrobat Forms for Legal Professionals seminar by Rick Borstein and Mark Middleton a few days ago. But you can go here to download the seminar materials, links to lots of good information on the topic and some samples. In particular, the sample document with buttons, checkboxes, radio buttons and electronic signature fields is interesting. Gee, Rick, I wish I already knew how to do all of that.

Create Your Own Fonts

PC Magazine highlights this font creating process that is so delightfully geeky that I don't care that you have to purchase a $79 piece of software to do it. Make your own fonts out of your handwriting or your kid's handwriting. Change your default font for your e-mails to your own handwriting. "Handwritten" e-mails would be very retro. So many uses.

Adobe Acrobat 8 Legal Resource Guide

I got the following information from Adobe today and think it is worth passing on to you.

Below please find the "hot-off-the-press" Adobe Acrobat Legal Resource Guide with links to free downloads, training, support, and informational resources.

Free Downloads & Trials

Acrobat 8.0 Professional Trial Download - http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatpro/tryout.html

Adobe Reader 8.0 Download - http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

Adobe Document Center Free Trial - http://www.adobe.com/products/onlineservices/documentcenter/features.html

Acrobat Connect Free Trial - http://www.adobe.com/go/freewebconferencing_2006

Training

Acrobat 8.0 Teaching & Learning Resources - http://www.adobe.com/education/instruction/teach/acrobat.html?tab:acrostdpro=1

Acrobat 8.0 Experience Flash Demo - http://www.adobe.com/go/acrobat8exp_uk

Acrobat 8.0: What's New for Legal Professionals OnDemand eSeminar (recording) - http://seminars.adobe.acrobat.com/p17441268/

Acrobat Online Legal Events - http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/event/index.cfm?event=list&loc=en_us&type=online_event&product=&interest=sol_legal

Adobe Events in Your Area
http://www.adobe.com/events

Acrobat Resources

Adobe Solutions for Legal Professionals Website - www.adobe.com/go/legal

Acrobat 8.0 Pro - New Features for Legal Professionals - http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/solutions/legal/productinfo/features/index.html

Acrobat 8.0 for Legal Professionals Whitepaper - http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/solutions/pdfs/Acrobat8_foLegalPros.pdf

Acrobat 8.0 Product Family Detailed Comparison Matrix - http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/pdfs/acrobat8_matrix.pdf

Acrobat 8.0 Professional Feature Overview - http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatpro/pdfs/acrobatpro_overview.pdf

Acrobat 8.0 Professional Datasheet - http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatpro/pdfs/acrobatpro_datasheet.pdf

Acrobat Connect Resources - http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatconnect/

Support

Acrobat for Legal Professionals Blog - http://blogs.adobe.com/acrolaw/

New Adobe Annual Support Plans - http://www.adobe.com/support/programs/

Free Acrobat Support, Tutorials and Forums - http://www.adobe.com/support/products/acrobat.html

Acrobat Developer Center - http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/

Adobe Support Knowledgebase - http://www.adobe.com/support/

Licensing

Adobe License Manager - http://www.adobe.com/go/alm

Volume Software Licensing Programs - http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/openoptions/index.html

Giving Thanks for E-Mail

It is the season of giving thanks in the U.S. While I have many things to be thankful for, including great friends and my family, none of those make for a good Law Practice Tips blog post.

So let me pick an unlikely candidate for my thanks and choose an application you may have already cursed at least once this week. Yes, let's give thanks for e-mail. (I can hear the rumblings now from those dealing with overflowing inboxes, balky spam filters and clients who are calling saying "Why didn't you return my e-mail from half an hour ago?")

Let's give thanks for universal e-mail. You youngsters may not remember the days when AOL e-mail meant only to other AOL users and you could not e-mail those on CompuServ. Just remain quiet while we old-timers raise a toast to FidoNet.

I am thankful that e-mail lets me easily stay in contact with good friends in places like Toronto, Canada or Washington, D.C. or Montgomery, AL at essentially no cost. It may be difficult to build a relationship just with e-mail, but you can nourish one with it.

I am thankful I no longer have to deal with envelopes, postage and, sometimes, Federal Express to send a paper or presentation materials across the country.

I am thankful that people who are inclined to share their wisdom with me can easily do so, by clicking "attach file" and send, instead of having to decide if it is worth the trouble to mail me a copy.

I am thankful for electronic mailing lists that allow me to tap the collective wisdom of many others. (And I'm really thankful for my GMail account to manage my electronic mailing lists.)

So, even though we hate spam, mysterious attachments we can't or shouldn't open, e-mail from people who obviously have too much time on their hands and getting a joke for the 5th time via e-mail, we can even be thankful for this simple business tool.

Unimportant E-mail and the Unused Blue Arrow

I get a few e-mails tagged as high priority or urgent, e.g. tagged with that red exclamation mark. I'm not sure how many end users even know what means. If someone e-mailing me thinks it is urgent, they usually begin the subject line with URGENT!!! That usually gets my attention, especially if they fall into the category of boss, spouse, person who helps me when I need it or OBA member needing help. But for me, the red mark works as good as the word in the subject line, even if it is used infrequently.

Now when is the last time you received an e-mail tagged with the low priority tag? That's a downward pointing blue arrow (in Outlook at least.)  While there may be some firms that use this, I think generally it is unused. We all probably think that our e-mail is important or we wouldn't be sending it, right? So why would we tag it as a low priority? This is particularly true these days. Considering the amount of e-mail that many of us receive, low priority may equate to "never read." So try this experiment. The next time you are sending someone a link to an article they should read or some truly low priority item, tag it with the blue arrow. I'll bet that many of you find that the e-mail is read more quickly and that you get a reply commenting on the blue arrow. But I could be wrong. Maybe it is just that everyone I know truly has no low priorities where e-mail is concerned.

Tip for Inserting Images into MS Word Documents

From Tom Mighell and his Internet Legal Research Weekly Newsletter comes this tip about how MS Word handles graphic images by default. He calls this feature "VERY annoying." I'd go further and say that the way Microsoft Word treats graphics when you try to place them into a document is its Most Annoying Feature (Non-security/privacy division.) I think the reason this bothers me so much is that I do the following steps. Then I forget to do the tweak when I get an upgraded version of MS Word (or I may working on another's computer) and it always seems to come back to haunt me when I'm putting some graphics into a document under a tight deadline.

"If you have Word 2002 or later and you try to insert an image into a document, you may notice that Word wants to create a box called a "Drawing Canvas" to hold the graphic.  VERY annoying, in my opinion.  Here's how to banish the canvas to the Word dungeon:  Select Tools, then Options, then General.  Simply uncheck the box next to Automatically Create Drawing Canvas When Inserting AutoShapes.  Then select OK.  If you really, really need the drawing canvas, you can always make it come back by checking that option, OR on a case-by-case basis by selecting the Insert menu, then Picture, then New Drawing." Thanks for the reminder, Tom.

Microsoft Releases Word Redaction Tool

Microsoft has released a new free add-in tool which allows redaction of MS Word 2003 Documents before distributing them. According to the download site, "The Microsoft Office Word 2003 Redaction Add-in makes it easy for you to mark sections of a document for redaction. You can then redact the document so that the sections you specified are blacked out. You can either print the redacted document or use it electronically. In the redacted version of the document, the redacted text is replaced with a black bar and cannot be converted back to text or retrieved.

"Sensitive government documents, confidential legal documents, insurance contracts, and other sensitive documents are often redacted before being made available to the public. With the Word 2003 Redaction Add-in, users of Microsoft Office Word 2003 now have an effective, user-friendly tool to help them redact confidential text in Word documents."

I've previously mentioned issues with properly redacting a PDF file. It seems like this release should cure that problem for PDFs generated from these MS Word documents.

Paste Special - Part 2 - Customizing Your Toolbars

Last month I did a post called "Paste Special - One of the Best Tips Ever." I was pleased, but not surprised, that I received several grateful e-mails from those who learned for the first time of this way to copy and paste the words, but not the formatting. But I also received a few e-mails, beginning with one from attorney Michael T. Newman of Ft. Smith, AR, pointing out there's an even better way to do this- by adding buttons for Paste Special or Paste Unformatted to the toolbars. They are correct. I use it myself, but in a fast-paced tips program, I usually omit that part.

So thank you for the e-mail prompts to tell "the rest of the story."  You can easily add a buttom to your toolbar for any of the functions you now access by using the drop down menus. Customizing your toolbar to add buttons for things you do frequently and remove the buttons that you never use is a great productivity tool. You can learn how to add and remove buttons from the toolbar by using your word processor's Help Files, but here are the steps as I've adapted them from the help files.

To Add a Button to a Toolbar in WordPerfect

1. Click Tools, then select Settings and click Customize.

2. In the Customize settings dialog box, click the Toolbars tab.

3. Choose a toolbar from the Available toolbars list, Click Edit.

4. In the Toolbar editor dialog box, choose a category from the Feature categories list box.

5. Choose a feature from the Features list. (Note: Each Feature Category brings up a different set of Commands here and the various "paste" ones are under Edit.)

6. Locate Paste Special or Paste Unformatted (I used both) and either click Add Button or drag your choice up to the place on the toolbar where you wish it to be located.

To Add a Button (or Command) to a Toolbar in Microsoft Word

1. Make sure the toolbar you want to change is visible. How? On the View menu, point to Toolbars. Click the toolbar you want to display.

2. Click the Toolbar Options arrow . (located on the right end of the toolbar)

3. Point to Add or Remove Buttons, and then click Customize.

4. Click the Commands tab.

5. In the Categories box, click a category for the command you want the button to perform. (Note: Each Category brings up a different set of Commands here and the various "paste" ones are under Edit.)

6. Drag the command or macro you want from the Commands box to the displayed toolbar.

7. On the Customize dialog box, click Close.

Look at your choices. You may want to add several buttons to your toolbars.

Paste Special- One of the best tips ever!

Several years ago when I was called on to do my first "60 Tips in 60 Minutes" program, one of my tips was about using Paste Special to copy and paste just the text from one document into another without bringing the formatting or hyperlinks or different font from the original document. (Just copy the text, open new document, then select Edit, then Paste Special, then Unformatted Text.) This is particularly useful when copying text from an online legal research provider or other web page into a word processing document. It has been a tip that is hard to "retire" as almost every time you mention it to a large crowd, someone says out loud, "Oh my gosh, I didn't know that" or something to that effect. I've received many e-mails over the years thanking me for this tip. This "classic" tip was the subject of an article by Dan Pinnington in this month's Law Practice Today. You might want to circulate the link to Dan's article (or this post) within your firm. Someone there may not know about this and it could save them lots of document clean up time.

Making Copies of Unsent E-mails

Readers may ask "Why would anyone want to make a copy of an unsent e-mail?"

Like so many tech tasks, once I learned how to do it, then I came up with many reasons why to do it. I might have drafted a long important e-mail and wanted someone else to review it before I sent it to the intended recipient, so I make a copy and e-mail it to the other. Or I am sending the exact same e-mail to ten people, but not as a group, like RFP's. Or, like last week, when my son's team won the Pee Wee Baseball Championship in Norman, OK, and I created an e-mail with imbedded pictures of him with his team (and the trophy) that I wanted to send to several different groups of friends. Or I'm sending out an e-mail to a very large people, but only want to send it out in groups of twenty to avoid spam filters. Or, perhaps most importantly, I want to create a collection of "form e-mails" to be used when needed.

Well, I do this frequently and it may prove useful to some of you. In the open (and completed) Outlook e-mail, click on File and then Copy to Folder. I usually copy unsent e-mails to the Drafts folder. Note that you can create many copies of the same e-mail in the same folder, as opposed to a file, where one file with the same name overwrites the prior file. The same method can be used to make copies of e-mails you have received, but dragging and dropping those to a folder usually seems quicker.

Redaction of PDF files

Redaction is the removal or obscuring of certain text before releasing a document to the public. With paper documents, it is pretty simple. Just take a black Magic Marker and color over the text and then make a photocopy of it. Redacting PDF documents doesn't work quite the same way. Recently the Pentagon released a report in PDF format about the Bagdad shooting of an Italian car spiriting a freed hostage to the airport. Many items, including soldier's names, were redacted by placing black boxes over them. It was fairly easy for anyone to access the improperly redacted information.

I recently learned from Adobe about some real and effective PDF redaction tools from Appligent.com. The products are not cheap, but if you are redacting a PDF you are going to distribute, you want to do it right.

The Google Spell Check

Spell checking in your word processor is a useful tool. But here's a goofy way to spell check anything that appears on your screen in any application. First, install the Google Deskbar. (Internet Explorer only.) Then when you want to spell check a word, double click on it to select it and hit Ctrl+Alt+G, then Enter. This will do a Google search for the word and give you the results on about 1/4 of your screen. If it is mispelled. most of the time Google will suggest the correct spelling. But even if Google doesn't, only a few hits means it is probably misspelled while millions means it is correct, or at least you are in good company.

The Past and Future of WordPerfect

My four-part WordPerfect Lawyer feature is concluded by this post. It included links to great sources of WordPerfect help, with hours of reading material, and lots of free downloadable macros. I probably didn’t discuss WP templates enough, so do not forget these powerful tools.

Is WordPerfect a viable option for the future for lawyers? Well, for the short term at least, my answer is still “yes.” WP 12 is a stable, powerful and inexpensive product that has focused on compatibility with the Microsoft world. If WordPerfect ceased operations tomorrow, WP 12 would still be viable for years. Some have already pronounced WordPerfect dead. David Coursey last November wrote a short obituary: “WordPerfect Killed Itself.” My prior statement that "MS Word did it" is a oversimplification. The company failed to respond properly to switch from DOS to Windows and the purchase of the company by Novell never seemed to be a good fit. You can glean a fairly good history of WP from the numerous comments to David Coursey’s post.

If WP does die, it will be sorely missed. Take a look at David Leffler’s lyrics to “Show Me the Codes” (sung to the tune of "Send in the Clowns") courtesy of Carolyn Elefant’s My Shingle. But what is a difficult situation for WP may be good news for us if it continues to focus on the legal marketplace. Certainly many lawyers will employ its “publish to PDF” feature for preparing their electronic filings.   

I’m hoping WordPerfect still has legs. My encouragement of current WP users to upgrade to WP 12 is good advice for you and your purchase brightens the future of WP. For those who have already drank the Kool-Aid and switched, improvements to Word have now closed the feature gap and it is hard to argue they should go back.

We still have more WordPerfect resources to cover. San Francisco-based microCounsel has a pretty nifty collection of WordPerfect resources, including a great set of links (scroll down to near the bottom,) articles and some free downloadables.

Those of you who are attending ABA TECHSHOW should not miss the WordPerfect Revival Meeting on Friday April 1, 2005. Here’s how we describe it: “Rise up, WordPerfect believers, for this afternoon’s tent meeting led by Brother Ross [Kodner.] You’ll witness testifying, sanctifying and deifying what many believe is the One True Word Processor for Lawyers. Meet the other faithful and gather strength and sustenance for evangelizing the power of the Revealed Code.” Ross sells legal macro libraries (large PDF Slide show) for Word and WordPerfect. (But we know his heart is still with WP.)

I hope this assemblage of WordPerfect information has been useful to you. Feel free to direct others to this blog or use the Permalinks to direct them to this series. Thanks to Doug Loudenback and the other WordPerfect “true believers” for the expertise they freely share online and in person.

Advanced WordPerfect Macros

One can generate extremely useful WordPerfect macros simply by recording them. But even more power can be unlocked by learning how to create them yourself. Everyone in the office need not learn this skill. Your resident WordPerfect Guru can create them and the rest of you can just enjoy running the macros. Of course, you can also find great macros that experts have posted on the WWW for others to download.

First, our state's expert, Oklahoma City attorney Doug Loudenback, has posted a great WordPerfect Resource page online. It contains numerous papers on aspects of WordPerfect available for you to download, including his 192 page "Common Person's Macro Manual." It also contains many of Doug's macros that are free for anyone to download and use.

Here's an example: "Math.wcm Revised 6/5/04 (replacing the earlier versions). This macro is a math and date calculator to be used in WordPerfect and is most useful if mapped to your keyboard, e.g., Ctrl+M. It does addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and a couple of percentages - one number of the other, or one number of the total. It calculates dates, including 'lawyer' dates'. The version which comes with v5.5 & v6.0 Grande Macros (not this one) also computes QDRO dates. It will write either the result, or the formula used and the result, into a WordPerfect document. For WordPerfect 8 or higher only."

Isn't that a powerful free tool? There's a lot more available on Doug's site. Doug also hosts Michael L. Fitzhugh's 93 page paper on PostScript Array there.

The place on the Internet where the WordPerfect experts congregate is WordPerfect Universe. It is really impossible to overstate the expertise of this online community. It contains an active user forum as well as links to other great WordPerfect resources, like Gordon "The Macro Man" McComb's site with free sample macros and macros for sale here,  Mike's Macros and Tips, and Barry MacDonnell's Toolbox for WordPerfect.

All the keys for you to become a true WordPerfect power user (or force an employee to become one) are in the links listed above. Have fun.

The WordPerfect Lawyer- Sharing Your Documents

What happened to WordPerfect to relegate it to a niche product primarily used by lawyers and some government officials? In a word, Microsoft happened.

The primary reason given by law firms for conversion from WordPerfect to MS Word is that their clients wanted documents in MS Word format, not WordPerfect. In many cases, that was not an accurate summary of the client’s wishes. The clients simply wanted to be able to open documents they received from the lawyer by e-mail. Clients should expect to receive digital documents from their lawyers in an easily readable form.  The lawyers work for the clients after all.

During the 90’s Microsoft Office was shipped pre-installed on more and more computers while people began to use the e-mail attachment method to transmit documents instead of faxes or couriers. Lawyers then began to hear from their clients that they were unable to open the documents they received via e-mail. These lawyers went to their IT departments and were told “you need to use Microsoft Word.” Of course, as many reading this understand, that was not necessarily the correct answer. There were alternatives, but by then most IT professionals had seen what they believed to be the handwriting on the wall and they were convinced that it was going to be a Microsoft world. So, they reasoned, might as well get those lawyers and staff converted to Microsoft sooner rather than later.

And so began (for many firms) the painful conversion from WordPerfect to MS Word. This pain was not because the staff was resistant to change, but because Word and WP really operate in significantly different ways. You can use different web browsers or different digital image editors and they will operate in much the same way. But once you get past the basic features, WordPerfect is from Mars and the MS Word is from Venus.

Of course, there were some firms that had a more simple solution than buying new software and retraining the entire staff. They just trained their people to convert their WordPerfect documents into a format that the clients could use. In most cases, it was as simple as using “Save as” to save the document in RTF format rather than WPD format. The WP document saved as RTF could generally be easily opened by Word.

But for the most part, clients generally just want to read the lawyer’s documents. Do they need to edit the documents? Generally speaking, most lawyers would rather have the client reading the documents and making suggestions rather than actually editing the legal work themselves.

So since WordPerfect 9, the ability to publish directly to PDF has been a part of WordPerfect. Almost everyone has available the free Adobe Reader to open and read PDF files.

The WordPerfect Lawyer will now share most documents with clients by selecting File, and then Publish to PDF. If the client needs to be able to edit the document, you can use “save as” and select a compatible format, such as RTF. But recent versions of WordPerfect, 11 and 12, have vastly improved document conversion features, essentially allowing documents to be easily converted to and from Word format. Even though you might hear a different story from your local court officials, if you are in an e-filing jurisdiction that requires PDF file format, upgrading to WP 11 or 12 is a simple way to generate the required PDF files from your WordPerfect documents.

So, while I’m not trying to sell software, it does appear clear that the WordPerfect lawyer needs to have at least version 11 or 12 of the product. The good news is that is not a huge investment. At the Corel website, purchasing the WordPerfect 12 upgrade is $149.99 in the box and $129.99 if purchased via download. I'm sure WP 11 is sold for less on eBay. Some may be interested in the WordPerfect Office 12 Legal Quick Start Bundle, which includes Amicus Attorney Organizer Edition and a package of business document templates.

A WordPerfect Lawyer in a Word World

Are you a WordPerfect lawyer in a Word world? You are not alone.

Texas attorney Craig Ball was doing a tips program with me and several others at our 2004 OBA Solo and Small Firm Conference. I gave a WordPerfect tip and he said “Now, how many people are still using WordPerfect?” Taking the bait, I asked for a show of hands and well over half of the audience still used WordPerfect as their primary word processor. He was very surprised and made a comment about being in Shangri La, which most in the audience took to mean paradise or utopia, but I wondered if he really meant the land that time forgot.

A significant reason why many Oklahoma lawyers still use WordPerfect is our resident guru on WordPerfect, Oklahoma City attorney Doug Loudenback. He produces, and the OBA is the exclusive sales agent for, the Grande Macros for family law. These are only sold to Oklahoma lawyers with a license that restricts them from using them to do pro se pleadings. Otherwise he has a pretty liberal licensing plan, one copy can be installed on multiple computers in the office and drop down customizable menus allow several lawyers to use GM to prepare their pleadings. You can examine the many features of the GM at the link noted above and I'll be happy to sell OBA members a copy. They are reason enough to stay with WordPerfect if you practice much family law in Oklahoma.

But having what many of us view as the more powerful word processor is of little use if you do not use many of its powerful features. So this week we are going to have daily features on how to unlock the power of WordPerfect. Many of these lessons will apply to that other word processor as well. But first let’s talk about what version of WordPerfect you use. If you are still using WP 8, 9 or even 10, it's probably time to upgrade. Let’s look at Doug Loudenback’s reasons to upgrade to WordPerfect 12 (or not.)

Stamp out broken e-mail links!

Do you still receive e-mails with broken links? The sender wants to direct you to a website, but you click and get an error message, only noticing afterwards that part of the web address (URL) is not highlighted as hypertext. Veteran Net users know how to work around this problem. Novices usually give up. Let’s spend a couple of minutes making sure you never send out a broken link again.

First of all, there are websites that will convert your long URL to a much shorter one that likely won’t be broken. Among these are TinyURL and SnipURL. They are free and easy to use. I have used TinyURL for a long time. Just paste the long link in, click and copy the shortened one it produces.

But many of you may have a way to avoid broken links that you may never have tried. Open a new e-mail in Microsoft Outlook, type a few letters in the body and click on Insert on the toolbar. Does an option for hyperlink appear? (This only works for messages in HTML, not plain text.) If so, you should be using this method to insert hyperlinks into your messages rather than pasting in the URL’s. It is much more readable to receive a message that says “Check out this website and this one and maybe this one, too” instead of reading between a bunch of URL’s—and those links don’t break! OBA Family Law Section Chair Keith A. Jones just sent out an e-mail section meeting notice with links to maps to the locations and social event, links to the Oklahoma statute under discussion and other links. It was very slick and very concise because a lot of the information rested behind the links. Try it!

A Nifty Tweak for MS Word

I'll admit to being a proud WordPerfect user. But I know many of you readers now use MS Word. When I used Word, one of the things I didn't like was the lack of the path and filename on the top of my display as is done with WordPerfect. I mentioned this to Oklahoma City Attorney John Brewer, one of the few lawyers I know who has always used MS Word. He agreed that would be a nice feature and a few days later, posted a "workaround" to our OBA members only OBA-NET showing how to do this. I think every Word user should try this one.

Open MS Word. Right click on one of the task bars. Select customize. Select the Commands tab. Select Web under Commands. On the right you will see "Address." Left click on "Address" and drag it to the task bar where you want it located. We put it on the top task bar to the left of "Help. (Since you are using the web setting, the pull down menu will show recently visited websites)

There may be better ways to do this, but this one worked and now I can see the path and file name of the document I have open in MS Word. Thanks, John.