[NOTE: This app was purchased by Corel and is now called WordPerfect Viewer. Click here for a review of the current app.] Although Microsoft Word is the dominant word processor used by lawyers, there was a time when WordPerfect ruled the legal market and the program still has loyal fans in the legal community. Unfortunately, if someone e-mails you a WordPerfect document on the iPhone, you cannot view the document with the iPhone’s native document viewer. The smart folks at LawBox LLC (makers of the LawBox app that I’ve previously reviewed) have come up with a solution, a $4 app called WPD Viewer for iPhone that lets you view WordPerfect files. (There is also a $6 version for the iPad.)
To use the app when someone e-mails you a WordPerfect file, simply tap and hold down on the attachment. This will cause a pop-up box to appear in which you can tell the iPhone to open the document in WPD Viewer.
The iPhone will then launch the WPD Viewer app and the app will translate the document into a format that the iPhone can display (HTML) and then you can view the document. Some of the formatting gets lost, but the text is all there. You can scroll through and read the document, and if you want to search for terms just enter a search term at the top and the words will be highlighted in the document. Using the iPhone’s standard copy-and-paste features, you can select text to copy and then paste into some other app. In fact, when you select text the pop-up menu allows you to not only copy but also bookmark or email, so in just one step you can select some text and then email only that text to someone.
If you double tap anywhere on the screen, or if you press the button at the top right with the arrow pointing to a line, a menu bar pops up on the left side. The four buttons on the menu bar allow you to (1) e-mail the text of the document (the text becomes the body of your e-mail), (2) bookmark the document, (3) export an HTML version of the document to another app (such as Good Reader) or (4) refresh the document. The refresh document button is necessary because in addition to getting documents into WPD Viewer via e-mail attachments, you can also use iTunes to send a document to the app, and using the refresh button you can reload the file list.
Speaking of file lists, the app stores the WordPerfect files that you send to it so that you can view them later. If you are done with a document, just swipe to delete it.
This is not a document editor app like Documents to Go or Quickoffice so you cannot revise WordPerfect documents with this app. Nevertheless, if you just want to be able to read a WordPerfect file when someone sends it to you, plus have the ability to copy and paste text from that document or convert the file into a pure text format, then this is the app for you. Indeed, to my knowledge, this is the only app for the iPhone or iPad that allows you to view WordPerfect documents, and thus I can pronounce that this is THE BEST WordPerfect viewer for the iPhone.
Hooray! Long, long overdue but worth the wait. Although I can’t edit the WP files, I’m willing to bet that other apps like GoodReader will someday provide that. Tablet Legal just had a great post about how to edit Word documents on the iPad. Seems like a tortuous workaround considering the limitations of the iPad and the technology that is available but it works.
BTW, FastCase updated its iPad app on Saturday. It’s called FastCase HD, I’ve been using it since then and it’s terrific.
FYI, I downloaded this new app from your link. I immediately noticed a quirk and advised the developer via email. In an exchange of emails the developer has indicated that they will add a feature to solve the problem.
The problem I encountered is that you cannot remove a document from the screen without deleting it from “Documents” and then tapping “Reload”. The developer suggested that I restart the app but that doesn’t work because the app keeps a cache of the last viewed document and displays it on restart.
I suggested a button to delete the document from the screen but not from the Documents list.