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Please: Before you send me an e-mail, please consider asking your question at the WordPerfect for DOS forum at WP Universe. You may get a much better answer than you will get from me, and certainly a faster one.
If you wish to send corrections or suggestions to the material on this site, please do so by composing an e-mail to the following address:
em36{-at-}columbia{-dot-}edu
Of course, replace "{-at-}"with the @-sign and replace "{-dot-}" with a dot.
But please read this first: Before you send me an e-mail, please consult this site's troubleshooting page and search page to see whether the answers you need are already available here. Also, please consult consult the frequently-asked questions page.
If you are asking a general question about WordPerfect (and not a question specifically about something you found on this site) please do not send me a private e-mail! Instead, please post your question in the WordPerfect for DOS forum at WP Universe instead of sending it to me as a private message.
I cannot promise to answer every question, but politely-worded messages are far more likely to be answered than others.
Note: If your e-mail service uses a challenge-response system that requires senders to click a link in order to authenticate themselves before you can receive the message (EarthLink SpamBlocker, for example), be very careful to add my address to your list of allowed senders before you send me an e-mail. Do not expect me to visit a web site in order to authenticate myself before I can reply to your question.
Fair warning: If you write to thank me for having saved you a significant amount of time and money, and if you are a lawyer, business-owner, IT manager, professor, published writer, or a member of any other relatively well-paid profession, I may write back to suggest that you visit a page from which you can send a voluntary contribution. Perhaps you might want to visit that page even before you write to thank me.
If you are asking for help about the information or drivers on this site, please include your WPDOS version (5.1, 5.1+, 6.0, 6.0a, 6.0b, 6.0c, 6.1, 6.2), your Windows version (95, 98, Me, NT, 2000, XP), and, if you have a question about printing, include the full name of your printer (for example, HP DeskJet 990cse), not just the number ("HP 1100" can mean any of four completely different printers; I cannot help unless you include the full name of the printer) and the kind of printer connection you use (parallel port, USB, network, etc.). Also, if you are trying to print across a network or if you have WPDOS installed on a network drive, please give the fullest possible details about the kind of network you use (ordinary Windows network, Novell Netware, etc.), and whether or not WPDOS is installed on a remote network drive.
Also, before asking if a WPDOS printer driver is available for your new printer, please visit this site's WPDOS 5.1 driver page or WPDOS 6.x driver page. When the page is open in your browser, press Ctrl-F to bring up your browser's Find dialog, type some of the numbers or letters of your printer's name in the search or find field, and press Enter. For example, if you have an HP PSC-1210, type only the numbers 1210 in the search field; if you type anything more, you may not find the reference to your printer. Repeat the search if necessary until you find all references to your printer. If either of these pages reports that your printer can only work with WPDOS through the use of one of this site's methods of printing to any Windows printer, please do not waste your valuable time by writing to ask if there is a top-secret WPDOS printer driver available only to Freemasons and Illuminati that I can send you so that you can avoid setting up that method. If such a driver existed, I would rush to tell you about it.
If you are trying to use Smartype or PRD+ in Windows 2000, XP, Vista, or Windows 7, according to the instructions elsewhere on this site, and you see an error message that says that no expanded memory is available, make certain that you have thoroughly studied the instructions on this site for modifying the memory settings of the desktop shortcut for a batch file.
If I ask you to "print to a file" and send me the "printfile," here is how to do it.
In WPDOS 5.1, use Shift-F7/Select/Edit/Port/Other and enter a filename (with the full path, as in c:\temp\output.prn or whatever filename you want). (Help! What does a "full path" mean?) Then "print" as you normally do, and the output will be sent to the filename that you specified; then use the same series of menus to change the Port setting back to what it was originally (probably LPT1).
In WPDOS 6.x, use Shift-F7/Select/Edit/Port/Filename and enter a filename (with the full path, as in c:\temp\output.prn or whatever filename you want). (Help! What does a "full path" mean?) Then "print" as you normally do, and the output will be sent to the filename that you specified; then use the same series of menus to change the Port setting back to what it was originally (probably LPT1). To print to a file in Windows applications, check the "Print to file" box in the Windows Print dialog; select a filename and a location where you can find the file after it is created.
Some problems with WordPerfect for DOS seem to have either (1) no known solution or (2) no solution that I know about, although someone else may have an answer. These problems include:
Please do not ask me for help with these problems. You may perhaps be able to find help with such problems on the WPDOS forum at WP Universe (free registration required before posting).
The frequently-asked questions have been moved to another page.