Who built WordPerfect, and where did it come from?
WordPerfect began in 1979 at Brigham Young University, where computer science professor Alan Ashton and graduate student Bruce Bastian wrote a word processor for the city of Orem's Data General minicomputer. The program worked well enough to sell, so the two founded a company in Orem, Utah, and moved the software to the IBM PC.
The market they walked into belonged to WordStar, released in 1978 by MicroPro International. WordStar leaned on control-key sequences that were hard to learn, its updates for IBM PC hardware came slowly, and a rewrite called WordStar 2000 pushed its own users away.
WordPerfect filled the gap. Version 4.2, in 1986, was the breakthrough, and version 5.1, in 1989, made the program the default on MS-DOS. Part of that was reach: it ran on DOS, Unix, VMS, Data General, the Amiga and dozens of other systems, which built an installed base no rival could match. Part of it was service. WordPerfect answered support calls for free, and kept answering them long after the cost stopped making sense.
What made Reveal Codes worth keeping?
Two features made WordPerfect users loyal in a way that looks strange now. The first was the keyboard. Every command sat on a function key combination modified by Shift, Alt or Ctrl: F7 to exit, Shift-F7 to print, Alt-F7 for columns. A cardboard template sat above the F-keys until you stopped needing it. There was no mouse support to miss.
The second was Reveal Codes. Alt-F3 split the screen: the document on top, every hidden formatting instruction on the bottom. Bold tags, margin changes, tab stops and font switches were all visible, and all could be deleted one at a time. Microsoft Word treated formatting as something the program handled on your behalf, the same instinct that later produced Clippy. WordPerfect handed you the wiring.
That is still the reason lawyers keep it. Federal and state courts set exact margin, numbering and page-break requirements, and a filing that misses them gets rejected. Reveal Codes shows precisely which code caused the problem. No other word processor has copied it in the same form.
Why did WordPerfect lose to Microsoft Word?
Windows 3.0 shipped in 1990 and took over the PC inside of two years. WordPerfect Corporation had no real Windows product ready. The first WordPerfect for Windows arrived late in 1991 and behaved like a DOS program wearing a Windows costume.
WordPerfect 6.0 for Windows, in 1993, was supposed to fix that. It was slow, it was buggy, and it wanted hardware most buyers did not have. A stable release did not land until 1994, by which point Word for Windows was polished and shipping inside Microsoft Office next to Excel and PowerPoint.
The bundle was the real weapon. WordPerfect sold a word processor. Microsoft sold a suite. WordPerfect Corporation had no spreadsheet and no presentation program of its own, so it leaned on Borland's Quattro Pro and on partnerships that never added up to one product. A buyer comparing an integrated suite against a word processor plus Lotus 1-2-3 plus something for slides took the suite. Word did not have to be better. It had to be adequate and included.
The numbers moved fast. WordPerfect entered 1992 still claiming 85 percent of the MS-DOS word processor market, but on Windows it held roughly a third against more than half for Microsoft. Annual revenue dipped from $622 million to $579 million in 1992.
What did Novell and Corel actually pay?
Ashton and Bastian sold. Novell, the networking company in nearby Provo, Utah, completed a $1.4 billion acquisition of WordPerfect Corporation on June 27, 1994. The payment was mostly stock, and accounts of its value differ: UPI reported the deal at $1.4 billion, while other tallies put the 59 million Novell shares and options exchanged at about $855 million. Novell's plan was to assemble an application suite that could stand against Microsoft Office.
It did not work. Novell had no experience running a desktop application business, releases slipped, and the gap with Word widened. Eighteen months later Novell quit.
On January 31, 1996, Corel Corporation, the Canadian maker of CorelDRAW, agreed to buy WordPerfect from Novell for roughly $115 million in stock and cash, in a transaction the Deseret News valued at about $180 million once licensing was counted. Corel chairman Michael Cowpland told the paper the purchase gave his company a "best of breed" suite of applications, and told existing customers holding site licenses and upgrade contracts that "We will be trying for maximum continuity." Less than two years separated the two prices.
Did Microsoft break the law to beat WordPerfect?
Novell argued that it did. In 2004 it sued Microsoft under section 2 of the Sherman Act, claiming Microsoft had shared Windows interoperability information, including the namespace extensions WordPerfect needed to sit properly inside the shell, then withdrew it once Microsoft had its own word processor to sell. The disputed period ran up to the Windows 95 launch.
The jury did not reach a verdict, the district court entered judgment for Microsoft as a matter of law, and in 2013 the Tenth Circuit affirmed. Writing for the court in Novell, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., Judge Neil Gorsuch held that antitrust law rarely forces a firm, even a dominant one, to deal with a rival, and concluded: "With respect to Novell at least, Microsoft did nothing unlawful." The Supreme Court refused to hear Novell's appeal in 2014, ending the case after a decade.
The narrower question of whether Microsoft targeted WordPerfect specifically was therefore never answered on the merits. What the record does show is structural: the company that set the rules of the platform also sold the application that won on it.
Who owns WordPerfect today?
Corel Corporation still owns and sells WordPerfect, and Corel's own ownership has changed twice since 2019. Vector Capital held the company from 2003, KKR bought it in 2019, and on February 26, 2026 Corel announced it would separate into two independent companies. Vector Capital took the creativity and productivity brands, including WordPerfect, CorelDRAW, WinZip, PaintShop Pro, Roxio, VideoStudio, Pinnacle and MindManager, while Parallels stayed with KKR. The transaction closed in May 2026, and Corel relaunched as an independent company backed by Vector Capital.
The product has moved more slowly than its owners. WordPerfect Office 2021, released in May 2021, is still the current version, and everything since has been patches and hot fixes rather than a new release. It is a Windows product, sold through Corel and through retailers such as Staples, Best Buy and Walmart.
Usage matches that. In the American Bar Association's 2021 Legal Technology Survey Report, 98 percent of responding lawyers named Microsoft Word among the word processors they use and 15 percent named Corel WordPerfect. That is a small share, and it is not nothing: a product that lost its market in the mid-1990s was still on roughly one law office desk in seven almost thirty years later.
Where to find one today: the physical leftovers turn up regularly from independent sellers. Shrink-wrapped DOS-era boxes, the thick printed manuals and the cardboard function-key templates that slotted above an IBM keyboard all circulate, and Etsy is the practical place to look through vintage listings on Etsy. The software itself is still sold new by Corel for Windows.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is WordPerfect still available in 2026?
Yes. Corel still sells WordPerfect Office for Windows in 2026. The current version is WordPerfect Office 2021, released in May 2021, and the releases since then have been updates and hot fixes rather than a new numbered version.
Who owns WordPerfect now?
WordPerfect is owned by Corel Corporation, which is backed by Vector Capital. Corel announced on February 26, 2026 that it would split into two companies, with Vector Capital taking WordPerfect and the rest of the creativity and productivity portfolio from KKR; that deal closed in May 2026.
Why do law firms still use WordPerfect?
Law firms keep WordPerfect for Reveal Codes, the split-screen view that exposes every hidden formatting instruction in a document so it can be deleted individually. Court filings carry exact margin, numbering and page-break rules, and in the American Bar Association's 2021 Legal Technology Survey Report 15 percent of responding lawyers still named Corel WordPerfect as a word processor they use.