Same here. When I first joined the computer services staff at the governor's office, Word Perfect was the preferred application. Within a few years, we encountered the same problem exchanging documents between different offices and switched to MS Word.
One of the greatest features of WP was Reveal Codes. It opened a window into the code and streamlined the process of troubleshooting issues in lengthy documents. The same feature on MS Word is worthless. The big difference in approach between the 2 applications is in the approach to formatting. With WP, you "turn on" a feature (italics, bold, etc.) then then it off while you are typing. In MS Word, you format text and paragraphs AFTER you have completed the document.
Loved reveal codes! I used them in search/replace for formatting an also with macros, back in the 5.1 days.
My wife still misses WP as it is no longer available for Mac. Word won’t handle parallel columns, short of a complex setup of text boxes. She writes scripts for stage plays occasionally and it’s a pain to get left/right stage notes/dialog columns to remain lined up.
Amen. WordPerfect's Reveal Codes is very much like editing HTML with a text editor (or posting html text on FreeRepublic).
When you turn on Reveal Codes it shows the font and formatting attributes in the form of a code before and after affected text, for example [underline]will underline this text[underline]. It makes it very easy to fix formatting errors.
Long MS Word documents will often have multiple unintended font and formatting changes throughout a document that are left over from when text was cut and pasted from an earlier document. Sometimes the only way I can figure out how to fix a complex MS Word document is to convert it to WordPerfect, fix it, and then save it as a Word document.
Word pays big dividends if you use Styles to format your text, and don’t try to apply lots of stuff to various bits of text here and there. Get your styles set up right on the front end, and turn on reveal paragraph marks. Know that the formatting, the style, is in the paragraph mark.