Conversion from Word Perfect (Word Perf 6.1 to Word 2000)

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Greetings loungers
I am part of a team assisting a legal firm migrate …
Word Perfect 6.1 to Word 2000

I would appreciate any feedback regarding the success of M/soft Word native conversion routines with respect to

Equations
Cusomized numbering
Table formatting

We will be testing extensively but nothing like leaning on those that have been before.

Regards
Geof

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Table formatting may work OK although the native conversion routines in Word seem to be optimized for WP 5.1.

With numbering and equations, I think you would be better off converting these to text and then redoing in Word. When you redo in Word, do it by pasting text (Edit => Paste Special => unformatted text) into a new Word document. Do not use converted documents as the basis for any new documents!

Here’s my rant on Word Perfect => Word:

Word and Word Perfect work very differently from one another. Each program’s methods have strengths and weaknesses, but if you try to use one of these programs as if it were the other, it is like pushing on a string! You can easily make a lot of extra work for yourself. If you are unwilling to take the time to learn to use Word’s methods, you should stick to using Word Pad. You’ll have a lot less grief, although you’ll miss out on a lot of raw power.

See Word for Word Perfect Users (addbalance.com/word/wordperfect.htm)
Word Perfect compared to Word (mvps.org/word/FAQs/)
Tips and Gotchas (mvps.org/word/FAQs/)
Does Word Have Reveal Codes? (mvps.org/word/FAQs/)
Word Perfect to Word Converters and Why None of Them Are Perfect
Converting Documents from Word Perfect to Word
for information on Word for Word Perfect users.

For more:
How to Create a Template (Part 1) (mvps.org/word/FAQs/)
How to Create a Template (Part 2) – download the Word version which includes a template built the way the tutorial describes. It is a work of art. (mvps.org/word/FAQs/)
Word’s Numbering Explained by John McGhie (mvps.org/word/FAQs/)
Understanding Styles (addbalance.com/usersguide/styles.htm)

In Word 2000 or later you can get the function keys to display in a special toolbar at the bottom of the screen if you want (something like pressing F3 twice in WP). The following macro will do this.

Sub ShowMeFunctionKeys()
Commandbars(“Function Key Display”).Visible = True
End Sub

Learn about Styles – really learn! I resisted for years and now regret every day of those years because although that string was still very hard to push, it kept getting longer and longer, and had some very important projects tied to it! Once you understand styles and the Word concept of organizing things into Chinese boxes everything falls into place and instead of pushing a string, you can push a button that turns on the very powerful text processing machine known as Microsoft Word and it will start doing your work for you instead of running around behind you trying to undo what you just thought you did.

As for converting documents from Word Perfect to use in Word… In a word, don’t plan on it. Documents converted from Word Perfect to Word are likely to be “poison,” in that they will cause innumerable headaches down the road when anyone copies text from them into another document (or worse, bases a new document on them). With your converted documents, you may want to consider saving them in Word protected for forms (without any form fields) using a password — and lose the password. Create a second copy of converted documents that have been converted to text files and then imported as text files into Word, use those as the basis for any copying.

General practice in WP is to have a document and copy and edit it to create a new document. This is not good practice in Word. In Word, construct a good, tight, template for your documents and use that template when constructing new documents. Among other things, this can avoid embarrassing “metadata” and things like surprise headers and footers from creeping into new documents.

So much for my rant.

Finally, in WP a lot of people use macros to hold chunks of text – boilerplate. In Word this function is filled with AutoText and AutoCorrect, not macros. Follow the links at Word Web Resources – AutoText for more information on these tools.
It’s a lot of reading, I know. It’s OK to chunk it down and do a bit each day, but I would recommend that you make it a top priority to do that bit each day.

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I’m not sure what tools you are using for the conversion, but if I open a WP 6.x document in Word 2000 that uses automatic numbering, it doesn’t work consistently. I forget the name, but if you search this forum, you will find recommendations for a conversion product that might resolve that issue.

As for equations, Word embeds Equation Editor objects for its equations; I very much doubt there is a way to convert anything into that format that wasn’t originally created that way in WP.

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