When will we regain our lost WordPerfect technology?

Years ago I used a word processing program called WordPerfect.  I liked it, and only switched to Word when I had to.

I established a reading list in WordPerfect, and when I transferred it to Word I realized a problem:  Word has almost no sort capability.  Excel, also, has almost no sort capability.  WordPerfect could sort by word, field, line, paragraph, and it could sort from the last word, the next to last word...whatever you wanted.  A list of names could be sorted by last name, no matter if there were middle initials, multiple middle names, whatever.

That was twenty years ago.  Until recently I would port my Word document into WordPerfect, sort it, and bring it back.  But I switched computers and lost my WordPerfect (in DOS!)  I have the same problem at work whenever I have mailing lists with full names in one field.  It's a pain to get the last names sorted.  It would seem that someone would provide the capability (short of going into a database program).  Why is this?  Certainly I'm not the only person who has various sorting needs with various lists.

I'd buy a used or old WordPerfect package, but they turn out to be ridiculously expensive.

I have to say, I find this odd.  It's as if we once had nonstick cookware, but then the company that made them went out of business, and we had to go back to using a lot of oil.