Comparing texts and documents

Two routes to a comparison

Task menu ▸ Word Helpers

• Compare Active Docs – puts two open documents side by side.
• Self-Compare Selection – compares any two passages you select one after the other.

Comparing two documents

Both documents have to be open. The add-in asks which one to compare against and shows you the result.

If only one document is open it says: "No other open document found to compare against. To compare text selections, first select text in the document."

Comparing two passages

This runs in two steps, and you can switch documents in between:

1. Select the first range – in any open document – and click Selection Ready.
2. Select the second range, in the same or a different document, and click Selection Ready again.

After the first step the add-in confirms how many characters were captured. If either selection is missing, it aborts. If both ranges are identical, the add-in says so and shows no comparison.

This is the way to put two versions of a clause side by side without having to create two documents for it.

Paragraph pairs in the same text

There is a third mode: select an even number of non-empty paragraphs and each second one is compared against the one before it. Handy when old and new versions sit alternately below each other in the same document.

With an odd number, or none, the add-in points that out.

What you can do with the result

The comparison window has several buttons:

• Summarize Changes – has the differences described in words rather than just displayed.
• Send to PDF – you give a path and filename and can open the PDF straight away afterwards.
• Copy to Clipboard – with formatting; you can paste the comparison into any Word document.
• Send to Document – opens the comparison in Word.

When it does not work

• "Word did not produce a comparison result." – the comparison itself failed; usually on very large or heavily formatted documents.
• "The comparison file is no longer available." – the intermediate file has been deleted in the meantime. Run the comparison again.