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Using Corel's Knowledge Base
Ever had a technical support question on the weekend? How about late at night? I don't know about you, but the only time I seem to need help is when I can't get anyone on the telephone.
Thank goodness for Corel's electronic support offerings, where you can get help 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They've bailed me out of more late night disasters than I care to count!
With one exception, all of the electronic support services are free of charge, so you can use them as often as you like. There is a list of all the different resources at the end of this article, in the section titled "Other Places You Can Go For Help".
What is a Knowledge Base?
The Knowledge Base is a huge collection of Technical Information Documents (TIDs), Frequently-Asked Questions (FAQs), and assorted "tips and tricks". When you need help, this is the place to find it. You can search through the documents by typing in the nature of your problem, or just a few key words.
Corel is constantly adding documents, so you'll always get the most up-to-date information. See the sidebar titled "Where do TIDs come from?" for more information on the Technical Information Documents. The Knowledge Base is available on the Internet athttp://kb.corel.com.
How does it work?
Corel redesigned the Knowledge Base site last October, so if you've visited the site before, you'll notice some changes. The two most recently released products, WordPerfect Office 2000 and CorelDRAW9, have buttons that you can click to display all the TIDs at once.
Under those two buttons is a text box where you can type the keywords that you want to search for. Bear in mind that since you're searching through the whole Knowledge Base, it may take a few minutes.
Figure 1. Corel's extensive collection of Technical Information Documents, Frequently-Asked Questions, and Tips & Tricks is available on the Internet at http://kb.corel.com.
It's worth a couple of mouse clicks to narrow down the search a little. Scroll down until you can see the different platforms listed underneath the keywords text box. Click the operating system you are using. Based on the selection of operating system, the following selections will vary, but in just a few clicks, you'll get to a page where you can type the keywords. When I chose to search through the TIDs for WordPerfect running under Windows 95/98/NT, I got the entry page shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. It took me three clicks to get to the WordPerfect section of the Knowledge Base. Select one of the WordPerfect versions to display a list of TIDs specific to that version.
To search through all the WordPerfect TIDs, type the keywords in the text box, then click Submit. Or, click the version of WordPerfect you are interested in. You'll get a list of all the TIDs for that version and yet another text box where you can type in keywords. If you drill down this far, you'll be searching the TIDs for that version only, so your search will be markedly faster.
Search Strategies
When you need to clean your floor, you don't reach for a toothbrush do you? Of course not! So why should you spend 30 minutes locating a document when you could have found it in five? Using these strategies, you can refine your searches so they are more productive.
First, be as specific as possible. If your system is crashing during the installation, be sure you use "installation" or "setup" in the search. Likewise, if an error refers to a specific file, include the file name in the search. If the Details window of an error message gives you a memory address, such as 0023:8964x34, use the part after the colon in your search.
Don't use commas and periods (or other punctuation)—use spaces instead. When you want to search for more than one word, separate the words with a space, not a comma. For example, if you want to find documents relating to the KERNEL32.DLL file, search for KERNEL32 DLL.
Searching for a Specific Phrase
When you type more than one word in the keyword text box, you'll get a list of documents that contain one or both words. So, if you're searching for information on printer drivers and you type "printer driver" as the search text, you're going to get documents that contain "printer" and documents that contain "driver" and documents that contain both "printer" and "driver" .
Next time, use quotation marks to search for the specific phrase "printer driver" so you only get the documents that contain the phrase "printer driver".
Searching with + and -
When you need to search for more than one word in a document, tie the words together with a plus sign (+). For example, "convert+template". If you search for "convert template", you'll get all the documents that have "convert", "template", or both words (Figure 3). Granted, the documents that contain both words will be at the top of the list so you can look at those first.
The dash (-) works the opposite way—it excludes words from the search. For example,"DAD-PerfectPrint" locates all the documents that contain "DAD", but not "PerfectPrint".
Figure 3. The number of result pages is always given at the top of the list, so you'll have a sense of what you're getting into when you start browsing through the documents.
Searching with AND, OR and AND NOT
If you're not having any luck finding relevant documents, don't give up. Maybe you need to expand the search a little. There are three search operators you can use: AND, OR and AND NOT operators. You've already been using the equivalent of the plus sign (AND) and the dash (AND NOT).
When you use the OR operator, you probably get more "hits" because you're searching for one thing or another. Let me give you a practical example: you're getting two separate error messages when you try to install the suite. The error messages both reference the "shipping profile". One refers to the location of the shipping profile and the other refers to a "driver". To search the knowledge base for documents that contain all of the documents that contain "location" or "driver" and "shipping profile", you use the following search: "location OR driver AND shipping profile".
Grouping Words Together with Parentheses
Remember when you learned how to group mathmetical calculations together with parentheses? They work the same way here. If you surround something with parentheses, it gets priority over the rest of the information.
When you did the math, you had to calculate the numbers in the parentheses first, then complete the calculation with other numbers. In a search, the search string inside the parentheses takes precedence, so the documents that contain that information will rank higher in the search results list.
Other Places You Can Go For Help
Corel goes all out when it comes to providing technical support outside of normal business hours. The following services are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. With the exception of AnswerPerfect™, the services are free—all you pay for is the phone call.
- Corel's Technical Support page - links to pages that cover technical support options (Premium, Priority, Classic), many of the "self-serve" options listed below and product specific information. Be sure to check out the Putting It All Togetherpages.
- Fax on Demand Service - there are hundreds of support documents that can be sent directly to your fax machine. There are Technical Information Documents (TIDs), answers to common problems, and tips and tricks. Call 877-422-6735 from a touch tone phone or fax machine to request a catalog or to request documents by their document identification number. There is a list of available catalogsavailable on Corel's web site.
- Interactive Voice Answering Network (IVAN) - Solutions to common problems are available through this service. Call 613-728-1937 from a touch-tone phone and follow the menus. Since the messages are really steps to a solution, you might need to stop in the middle and try something. When this happens, you can save your session and come right back to it later.
- Corel's Bulletin Board Service (BBS) - if you have a modem, you can dial into the BBS and download updated program files. Call 613-728-4752.
- Corel's FTP site - visit this site to download service packs, updates, patches, conversion filters, utilities and printer drivers. Access the site directly atftp://corel.com or go to http://www.corel.com/support/ftpsite/index.htm where you can search for files by product. The latter has links to the 10 ten downloads so you can get to the popular files right away.
- Corel newsgroups - communicate with other users in an informal setting. Go to http://www.corel.com/support/newsgroup.htm for links to all the newsgroups.
- WordPerfect Universe - THE place where WordPerfect people hang out online. It's a treasure trove of FAQs and links to other WP oriented sites. It is one of the friendliest places on the Web to get answers to your WordPerfect questions. You will probably find yourself coming back to share your knowledge with others.
- AnswerPerfect™ - this is the only technical support service that isn't free, so I've put it last in the list. If you've got a credit card and you're willing to pay $9.95 per incident (question), you can send an email message directly to Corel's Technical Support department. They try to provide an answer in one business day, but since you are communicating on the Web, delays are possible. You may want to take a look at this list of the most frequently-asked AnswerPerfect questions.
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