Someone must know...

[venta]

Is there a nice, friendly way to diff two Word documents ? Or, even better, merge the changes made to the two of them ?

Answers like "well, you should have edited the correct copy in the first place" will get you glowered at.

Comments

[edling.livejournal.com]

Save both documents as text files and diff them? Or maybe as HTML if they've got complicated stuff. I suspect the results'd be gibberish, but I can't think of any other ways to do it.

I suspect the only realistic way is going to be the old-fashioned eyeball diff. Enjoy...

Apologies if you know this one already...

[mrph.livejournal.com]

Word's compare documents feature (tools menu, exact name varies on version of Word) isn't that bad - open one, choose compare, select file to compare to and it then marks up the open copy of the (first) document with the differences.

Re: Apologies if you know this one already...

[venta.livejournal.com]

Thanks - I really am very ill-educated in Word, and I didn't know that.

OK, he already gave you the answer...

[condign.livejournal.com]

If you have Word XP there's a document compare features. In the meantime, I'll just say you should have edited the correct document in the first place--glowering ventas can be sexy...

Re: OK, he already gave you the answer...

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

can be sexy...

...or possibly highly amusing. I have a mental image of something not dissimilar to a Paddington 'hard stare' !

(PS. I nominate a variant on the textfile solution: export as HTML ! Yes, I know MS HTML is pure insanity, but you don't have to read it and you'll still see table changes etc. in the diff.)

Re: OK, he already gave you the answer...

[condign.livejournal.com]

But sexy is more likely to earn me the much-desired glower.

Someone take pictures and send them to me.

[neilh.livejournal.com]

You shouldn't use Word...(hope that warrants a glower too?)...but what else is there that is good for document control? So many places use word and excel to keep their important data and then can't figure out what has changed since the last version. Any suggestions that Lotus Notes features in the answer will be met with several hours of hysterical laughter.