26

Businesses Analyst from my team keeps sending us the updated Requirements documents often and I end up hunting the recent changes by comparing the old version. Is their a good way of comparing the Word documents?

Note: We have the track changes option ON, but now the documents looks like a blood bath, complicating it much more :(

Torsten Marek
  • 83,780
  • 21
  • 91
  • 98
reva
  • 1,477
  • 2
  • 14
  • 23
  • See also: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/641538/is-there-a-word-document-format-that-supports-version-diff-comparisions/641554#641554 – kbulgrien Sep 27 '13 at 17:04

12 Answers12

36

Use this option in Word 2003:

Tools | Compare and Merge Documents

Or this in Word 2007:

Review | Compare

It prompts you for a file with which to compare the file you're editing.

Nathan Fellman
  • 122,701
  • 101
  • 260
  • 319
  • 2
    Compare and Merge Documents is so nonintuitive as to be useless. – Chris Nelson May 04 '10 at 19:34
  • @Chris, it takes getting used to. I still would rather not use raw `diff` output, preferring to use `tkdiff` or something similar, but that doesn't make `diff` useless. Besides, this is the built-in way to do this. – Nathan Fellman May 04 '10 at 19:37
  • 1
    If one has both old and new documents open in Word 2003, Window | Compare Side By Side with ... is an option, but this is no substitute for the difference detection and highlighting that Word 2007 is capable of. Side-by-side visual comparison is not practical it requires users to be remarkably able to avoid overlooking subtle differences (that do not involve a lot of area). – kbulgrien Sep 27 '13 at 16:41
  • See also: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/641538/is-there-a-word-document-format-that-supports-version-diff-comparisions/641554#641554 – kbulgrien Sep 27 '13 at 17:04
  • @NathanFellman What's with the random bold letters in this answer, I see you have edited them in specifically. Is there a reason that they are here that should be in the answer? – GPPK Jun 15 '18 at 09:06
  • Those are the keyboard shortcuts. Use ALT+ to reach them. – Nathan Fellman Jun 16 '18 at 20:20
10

I use TortoiseMerge with the xdocdiff plugin to compare Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF versioned files

Christian C. Salvadó
  • 807,428
  • 183
  • 922
  • 838
6

If you have Beyond Compare, you can diff two word documents with the help of some rules that you have to download from the developer's site and plugin. It'll then give you a text-only (without formatting) view (with some word format-gibberish that you can ignore. The differences will be highlighted and easy to find.

I made a note on how to do it here. It talks about Excel but there is a rule for Word in the same place.

If you don't have Beyond Compare... buy it! Highly recommended.. I'd struggle without it.

Gishu
  • 134,492
  • 47
  • 225
  • 308
3

Codejacked covers three different methods on how to compare word documents.

Swati
  • 50,291
  • 4
  • 36
  • 53
3

You're using the wrong tools. Through the course of my last major project, we managed to convince the entire team to move to a Wiki scheme. Not only did it make tracking changes faster and easier, but it helped organize the information better. Rather than having to keep track of arbitrary indexes in a large text document, hyperlinks were available between documents.

This meant that the documents could naturally flow from high-level to specifics. Implementation of such specs was incredibly easy in comparison to Word docs. Also, the fact that the docs were in a central location ensured that no one was still working from an out of date copy they saved to their hard drive.

I know there can be some internal resistance to moving in new directions. But if you can convince your colleagues that they should be forward thinking and always challenging themselves, they'll give it a shot and become true believers in no time flat. :-)

64BitBob
  • 3,110
  • 1
  • 17
  • 23
2

Attorneys use programs such as Comparewrite and DeltaView as we are comparing documents daily. We call it "blacklining" a document because the differences show up in bold underline for additions and black strike-through for deletions.

Fred
  • 21
  • 1
2

Near the "track changes" stuff there is also an option to compare documents, I believe.

Thomas
  • 174,939
  • 50
  • 355
  • 478
2

Open any of the documents and use the Review>Compare tab.

Gouri
  • 31
  • 1
1

If the formatting is basic, one option is to use a tool that dumps the doc to a plain text file, and then use diff as you would on any other.

Daenyth
  • 35,856
  • 13
  • 85
  • 124
1

I don't know how to compare the files individually, since they are binary, but how about making a program that talks to MS Word, copying the contents of the files to a pure-text file? Then you could compare the plain-text files.

André Chalella
  • 13,788
  • 10
  • 54
  • 62
0

Versionate might do the trick.

Terhorst
  • 2,071
  • 3
  • 16
  • 19
-2

The document comparison features in Word 2003 are extremely poor, and often results in the user removing parts of documents they did not want too

The only rational choice is to use other software. There are a multitude of text comparing software in the marketplace, but to do this within Word, the simplest answer is to upgrade to Word 2007 or later versions

From Word version 2007 the ribbon command "Review" and "Compare" are easy to find, and operate reasonably obviously. And they have a nice clear layout of merged changes, and the before and after docs

The small cost of the upgrade will be well worth considering the time you will waste in 2003 compare, and the potential damage to your documents it could cause

Any suggestions by others that you can use the compare features in 2003 is mischievous, and has not well thought through given the long term consequences of parts of your documents being silently deleted

TFD
  • 23,890
  • 2
  • 34
  • 51
  • 22
    This doesn't tell you actually how to diff them. It's not an answer. – homemade-jam Aug 01 '13 at 10:17
  • @homemade-jam is correct – Neowizard Sep 12 '13 at 17:39
  • 9
    Select the "Review" tab, pull down "Compare", click "Compare... Compare two versions of a Document (legal blackline)". A "Compare Documents" dialog appears. At "Original Document": browse to, or paste in a path to, the "old" document. Do the same for "Revised document". Choose how the comparison is performed "More >>" button. Click "OK" to start the comparison. One then sees a panel that identifies differences along with side-by-side views of both documents. Double-clicking in the differences panel moves the view in both document panels so one can view detailed markup in the two documents. – kbulgrien Sep 27 '13 at 16:58
  • @homemade-jam Why the -1. OP asks about 2003, I suggest upgrade to 2007, not a technical answer. Assume OP can use the F1 key. It's not complicated. Notice OP voted it correct, this shows answer WAS complete – TFD Feb 18 '14 at 22:36
  • @Neowizard Why the -1. OP asks about 2003, I suggest upgrade to 2007, not a technical answer. Assume OP can use the F1 key. It's not complicated. Notice OP voted it correct, this shows answer WAS complete – TFD Feb 18 '14 at 22:38
  • @kbulgrien thanks for sanity, but probably unnecessary – TFD Feb 18 '14 at 22:38
  • 2
    @TFD, The OP might be able to upgrade from 2003 to 2007, but it's still not an answer to the question. If someone else were to find this page when looking for an answer to this question, this specific answer will likely not be helpful. – Neowizard Feb 20 '14 at 09:36
  • @Neowizard The OP mentions he is comparing, it's just not any good. My answer says where to get a better compare. So it's a perfectly fine answer. Other answer for other product don't have step by step instruction either. You aren't knocking them? – TFD Feb 20 '14 at 10:48