Quattro Pro 9 review

With Quattro Pro 9 the old, clunky PerfectScript macro language has been joined by VBA, newly licensed from Microsoft. Sadly, the usefulness has been compromised. You can't record VBA macros and the object model of Quattro Pro is very poor, with just three objects: Application, Document and PerfectScript. Almost all interaction with Quattro Pro must be carried out by calling methods of the PerfectScript object. There's basic help available but it's not integrated into the VBA Object Browser or the VBA Editor. Pressing F1 when typing PerfectScript methods in VBA will produce a 'Keyword not found' error. But, the inclusion of VBA in Quattro Pro will extend the possibilities for using the product.

However, the mapping component seems to be stuck in the 1970s, with defunct counties like Salop and Avon included, and Shropshire, Rutland and the newly restored Welsh counties excluded. Some old bugs have returned to haunt Corel, including the problem in the fill down routines from version eight. In fact it's got worse. Fill a series from 2 to -2 in steps of 0.1 and you get -1.77635683940025E-15 where you should see zero.

Quattro Pro 9 has improved, and with further changes it could give Excel and 1-2-3 a run for their money. But, it's still following the pack rather than leading it.

Author: Simon Jones