How To Compare Two Word Documents and Find Differences

Comparing documents for differences is a tedious process, but you can check for difference between 2 word document easily.

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Follow this tutorial to see how it can be done.

Step 1. Have 2 Word Documents (.doc, .docx).

Step2. Goto Review –> Compare ( Select “Compare”, Compare 2 versions of document. )

compare-docs

provide the path to both the documents and press “OK”.

You will show the difference between the documents alongside with the original documents in small panes.The differences will be shown as striked of lines, in the middle pane, making it easy for viewing the difference.

See below Image for example.

word-docs-comparison

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54 comments

  1. mutu26 Reply

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  2. Arpan Kar Reply

    really helpful article..
    btw can you tell me how to see percentage wise similarity of two word documents?

  3. Gaurav Lumba Reply

    Thanks for this. Awesome tool. Nice that they include it in Word.

  4. Suchithra Jayakumar Reply

    Thank you! Dint know that Word had this feature.. its awesome!

  5. Edward Reply

    Many thanks for this tip. I was starting to despair as I had a couple of huge legal contracts to compare, and I thought either I would have to do it manually or ask the lawyers to do it a huge expense!

  6. Karla Reply

    Hi, thank you so much for this tip. I have one question. How do I know which of the coloured text in the new version was in the first document but not in the second one and which was in the second one and not in the first?

  7. Karla Reply

    Hi. Thank you for this tip. Could you please let me know how can I know which lines were in the first document but not in the second and which were in the second but not in the first one?

  8. Yen Reply

    May I ask a question, my MS word 2010 only show the compared version; do not show the 2 file (original and revised)?

    How can I see all of them?

  9. Sara Reply

    how do I reopen the Original and Revised Document Panes once they close? I can’t seem to reopen them once I close the document and reopen it

    • Liz Reply

      @ Sara – June 10, 2016 at 11:02 pm

      Just to the right of the Compare button (at least, in 2007) is a button marked ‘Show Source Documents.’ Click that button and choose the fourth option – ‘Show Both.’ As you can see, you can also choose to show only the original or revised or neither. Clicking the X to close either of them, changes the option in the ‘Show Source Documents menu.

      For goodness’ sake, save this hint somewhere you’ll find it again – if you’re like me and only occasionally close one or other pane, you’ll probably find yourself months from now, scratching your head and going, “How did I do that again??!!’

  10. Sasi Reply

    I had been using online tools to do this comparison, Thanks for the information.

  11. Mosawer Reply

    thanks ,

    i want to know how to compare a group of word document with original group .

    is there any solution then please reply me .

    Thanks

  12. Smita Jadhav Reply

    I have i need to comparing two documents.In first document consider as original document and second document consider as our typed document and compare first and second documents.The different text in second document text will be highlighted with color. I am not getting any idea about this can anyone suggest me how to do this comparison in asp.net web applications. please can anyone help me out.

  13. Salem A. Reply

    I have question about some words, such as; Fine, can I say Sth1. more fine than Sth.2
    means comparing between 2 things; or Sth.1 finer than Sth2.
    **Sth.= Something***

  14. Radha. K. Palakuzhi Reply

    Thanks a lot for your guidance and it’s really help me as well as great help to others.

  15. Raquel Reply

    Hello – any advice as to how to remove document protection to allow me to compare two documents? I’ve gone through trust centre and disabled the editing options – but I keep getting the same error re document protection being in effect? There is no password encryption on either document. Tks!!

  16. Desiree Reply

    Hello I have both documents open and have checked that there are no protections but when I click ok after selecting Compare Document etc. my error message is “You cannot merge these documents because document protection is in effect”

    Please help

  17. Nan Reply

    This compare was not helpful at all. It shows pages and pages of DELETED …INSERTED….. DELETED … INSERTED. i presume because I copy/pasted over entire sections at one time. That is not the POINT of a simple compare. I don’t care how they came to be. I simply want to compare 2 documents as they exist right now and tell me the differences — as if neither document had a history.

  18. Bakary Reply

    Is there a way to check two word documents, and see if they have exact same sentence?

  19. Max Reply

    great hint! did not even know this function(s) exists in Word – Thanks a lot!

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