OK, so I imported the P7 female obj from the geometries folder (not by exporting from Poser itself) as a single obj.  I entered the vertex modeler.  I chose the symmetry feature.  I checked soft select.  However, soft select does not span the seams of the body part groups.  Is there a fix for this?  I didn't see a solution in the Carrara manual.

I've attached a screenshot.

Note - I've had a couple of posts in this forum lately because I've just started using Carrara and Poser more.  I've had them but never really did much.  I have to say that I am very impressed with Carrara 8 so far and am really enjoying exploring the tools.  Don't want to come off as a complainer.

Did you trie dto use the CR2 file? The problem with the OBJ is that it is a lot of oieces togheter, thats why the softselection dont work. For Carrara the imported object looks like done with a lot of small objects: groups.

Theres an option in the morph tab to save the morph only, maybe you cna use this in Poser... I am shure you can.

That solves the soft-select problem.  But now the verteces are in the wrong place when I try to load the Poser morphs.  In Poser, the figure explodes because the obj is too large, even though I import the CR2 file to Carrara.  I've tried exporting from Carrara with "in local coordinates" checked and unchecked.  Is there something to check when opening the CR2 in Carrara, as opposed to when exporting the obj?

So far, I can either import the Poser figure obj file to Carrara, but then soft select won't span body parts, or I can open the CR2 in Carrara (or load from the content browser), but then the exported geometry explodes the morphs inside Poser.

I'm so close.  Aargh.

Sometimes is related to many things: normals in wrong direction, different sizes or point order. I remeber theres a way to fix point order, I think is with free UVmapper, really dont remeber.

I will try something here, I need to know more about this too.

You can use UVmapper. you save the uvs file of the figure. Do your thing, then load the uvs file back to the figure. It will give you all your groups back. So here are both versions of UVMapper instructions. Classic is free. This gives you a single mesh to play with then will give back your groups so you don't get that out of vert order. 

Pro version

Load the figures OBJ into UVMapper Pro
File | Export UVs ... (checking "Export Group Names" & "Export Material Names", uncheck everything else)
Select | Select Method | * by Facet
Map | Color | by Material
Select | All
Tools | Assign to | Group (and type All into the box, click OK)
Tools | Assign to | Material (and type All into the box, click OK)
File | Save Model (Leave ALL unchecked)

Classic version

The way to do this is :-
Load the figures OBJ into UVMapper.
Export the UVs (File | Export UVs ...), checking "Export Group Names", and "Export Material Names", uncheck everything else.
Edit | Select By | Facet
Edit | Select | All
Edit | Assign | to Group and type All into the box, click OK.
Edit | Assign | to Material and type All into the box, click OK.
File | Save Model, checking "Export UV Coordinates", "Export Materials", and "Export UVMapper Regions", everything else unchecked.
Be sure not to overwrite the original OBJ.

Load into modelling program and do your morphing.
Do not weld vertices or any other operation that changes the number of vertices or faces.
If the mesh isn't a unimesh you'll still have deal with the splits at group boundaries.

When you've finished your morphing, save and load the morphed OBJ back into UVMapper.
Import the UVs (File | Import UVs ...), that you saved earlier.
The grouping and materials have now been restored.
Load into Poser, then use the Group Editor to spawn props for each group, and save each morphed body part out as an OBJ so that it can
be loaded as a morph target, or use a script (see Python Scripting Forum at Renderosity) to automate most of morph creation process.

It must be that P7 people are not unimeshes.  When I try the UVMapper solution and reimport back to Carrara, the soft select still can't cross body part lines. Is there a reason that this seems to be simple in the ZBrush tutorials but not in C8?

Your right. It needs to be a unimesh to work. Not enough coffee in me yet. I missed the P7 part. Sorry about that.