Originally produced by the WordPerfect Corporation, it was sold, first to Novell and then to Corel. Soon it was bundled with Quattro Pro and other programs into an office applications suite first called Perfect Office, then WordPerfect Office. WordPerfect was late in coming to market with a Windows version, and the program suffered a decline in popularity from which it has never recovered. Amongst its remaining avid users are some law firms and a few universities. Nor did Corel's attempt to promote it as the standard word processor on Linux systems prove successful.
WordPerfect was known for using just about every possible combination of function keys. This made it necessary for many users to use a keyboard template describing how to accomplish a function. This was in contrast to WordStar, which it supplanted as the major word processor.
WordPerfect aficionados remain convinced of the superiority of their word processor of choice, pointing out the way in which the "Reveal Codes" function (which allows the user to toggle between normal editing mode and a mode in which embedded formatting commands are visible and editable) gives the power user very precise control over the text. They also argue that WordPerfect has powerful features for creating tables of authorities in legal documents and correctly counts the number of words in the document, including footnotes.
Those preferring the Microsoft Office suite cite MS Office's better integration between the different programs (such as e-mail programs), and WordPerfect's poor implementation of Windows conventions (in the early Windows versions of WordPerfect) and what they perceived as its lack of user-friendliness.
