By Caitlin Burns, DocsCorp Content Manager.
Knowing the differences between two documents can be make-or-break. Lawyers need to see every minor change to a contract, clause, or Court filing because it could be the difference between winning and losing a case. Maybe your comparison needs aren’t so dire – you just don’t have the hours to spend poring over a file trying to detect a comma added here or there. Either way, comparing two Word documents in compareDocs is the most accurate and reliable choice. Below we offer a step-by-step guide to comparing in the application.
Option 1: Load in the documents
The first way we’ll explain is loading your two documents into the compareDocs User Interface directly.
- Drag and drop your document into the Original field OR press the Original [Open] button and navigate to the document from there.
- Drag and drop your document into the Modified field OR press the Modified [Open] button and navigate to the document.
3. Select Word as the Document Output and Consolidated report marked up with redline as the Report Type.
4. Press the View button and select the View as New Document option.
The Comparison Report will open in a new Word document, and the differences will be marked up as redline.
Alternatively, you can select a Consolidated report marked up with Track Changes. This type of Comparison Report can become the next working version of your document, in which you can accept/reject the changes.
Option 2: Compare from within Word
Rather than exiting one application to open another, you can import a document into compareDocs from Word directly.
- Open both your Original and Modified documents in Word.
- In the Original document, press Launch in compareDocs from the DocsCorp ribbon.
- Navigate to the modified document and click Launch in compareDocs from the DocsCorp ribbon.
Both documents should now be in compareDocs. Switch the documents if required by pressing the arrows in the space between Original and Modified.
4. Select Word as the Document Output and Consolidated report marked up with Track Changes option as the Report Type.
5. Click Compare and choose View As New Document. You can now accept/reject the changes.
Configure rendering sets for Word and PDF documents
The Rendering Sets control the format of the annotations or mark-up in the Comparison Report. compareDocs provides ten default ‘server-side’ Rendering Sets for PDFs and four default Rendering Sets for Word documents. You can use any of these Sets as they are, or as a template to create a new Local Rendering Set to save to your computer.
Get up to speed.
It's quick and easy to see what's changed between two Word documents when you use compareDocs.
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