Background

• WordPerfect 5.1 is a word-processing application which was widely used in the late 1980s and early 1990s. WordPerfect 5.1 ran on an MS-DOS platform on IBM-compatible PCs. The newer WordPerfect 12 forms part of the WordPerfect Office suite, designed to be run under Microsoft Windows.
  
  

Differences

• WordPerfect 5.1 was sold as a standalone application, whereas WordPerfect 12 was only released as part of the WordPerfect Office 12 suite, which included spread-sheet and presentation graphics software along with the word processor.
  
  

Versions

• Both WordPerfect 5.1 and WordPerfect 12 have now been superseded by a later version. At the time of writing, the most recent version of WordPerfect is available as part of the WordPerfect Office X5 suite.
  
  

Presentation

• WordPerfect 5.1 and WordPerfect 12 both allow you to create and edit documents. WordPerfect 12 uses the abilities of Windows to display the documents in a true WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) format, rather than the simple text-based format of WordPerfect 5.1.