| 1 | Document comparison for MS Word .doc files. What is the best solution for comparing financial, human resource or sales information? |
| 2 | Why compare .doc files ? |
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| 4 | Having most documents in MS Word (.doc) file format you need a tool to analyze two documents by comparison. Such a solution solves two main problems – it analyzes changes that have been made within two documents with common ancestor, it can monitor changes of document you have. |
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| 6 | Why compare: |
| 7 | |
| 8 | Analyzes changes that have been made within two documents with common ancestor; |
| 9 | Monitor changes of document you have; |
| 10 | Make sure comparison solution you are using allows to: |
| 11 | |
| 12 | Compare two .doc files. It must be able to read doc’s text, table’s within text and other useful information; |
| 13 | Compare .doc file with some other, for example with plain text or with .pdf version of document or with information on web-page; |
| 14 | Create some comparative report, so you can freely share your knowledge with co-workers; |
| 15 | Must-have features: |
| 16 | |
| 17 | Compare any2any document format; |
| 18 | Creating comparative report; |
| 19 | KNOWN SOLUTIONS |
| 20 | |
| 21 | MS Word |
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| 23 | As you know MS Word has a build-in comparison function. In Word 2003 you can compare .doc files side-by-side, previous version has an ability to track changes that have been made in document. |
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| 25 | “When you use the Compare and Merge feature to compare any two documents, Microsoft Word shows the differences between them as tracked changes (tracked change: A mark that shows where a deletion, insertion, or other editing change has been made in a document.).” |
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| 27 | The problem is that you: |
| 28 | |
| 29 | Cannot compare .doc and .txt or .doc and .xls or .doc and .pdf; |
| 30 | Cannot create a comparative report to share with co-workers; |
| 31 | Why not use MS Word build-in comparison: |
| 32 | |
| 33 | Cannot compare any2any file; |
| 34 | Cannot generate comparative report; |
| 35 | Other comparative utilities |
| 36 | |
| 37 | Not a solution too as those utilities are for web-masters and programmers, most of them are oriented to compare .cpp, .pas, .htm files. |
| 38 | |
| 39 | Make sure utility you are testing has: |
| 40 | |
| 41 | Ability to compare different types of files (.doc, .xls, .pdf, web-pages); |
| 42 | Allows to create comparative report |
| 43 | Costs less that 100 US$ |
| 44 | Doesn’t include highlighting syntaxes for .cpp and .pas file as this will do a job only for web-masters and programmers and won’t be any kind of use for you, except you are paying for all those features; |
| 45 | Why not use other comparison solutions: |
| 46 | |
| 47 | Oriented on web-masters and programmers; |
| 48 | Lack of features needed for office jobs; |
| 49 | Compare Suite |
| 50 | |
| 51 | Compare Suite was created as a tool for those who works with papers in paperless office. I mean those who deal with different kind of documents – MS Word files (.doc), Excel Files (.xls), Adobe Acrobat (.pdf), Web – Pages (.htm – not a set of tags that web-masters need, but a easy readable text). Compare Suite is tool for comparison of financial, human resource and sales information. |
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| 53 | So that is the main purpose to use Compare Suite – it’s greatly oriented and optimized for document management and analysis, but not for web-master and programmers. |
| 54 | |
| 55 | To do such an optimization we added all those features to Compare Suite: |
| 56 | |
| 57 | Ability to read any file format (include MS Word, Excel, Adobe Acrobat, web-pages, plain text); |
| 58 | ANY to ANY file comparison. It means that you can compare .doc with .pdf or .xls to .htm; |
| 59 | Comparative report is what makes easy communications with co-workers and sharing knowledge. |
| 60 | Advanced user can configure Compare Suite for scheduled running; it’s necessary for monitoring tasks and other. |
| 61 | COMPARE SUITE'S SAMPLES |
| 62 | |
| 63 | Compare Suite find's if some paragraphs were added into MS Word (.doc) file: |
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| 67 | Click on image to enlarge. |
| 68 | |
| 69 | Compare Suite highlights found differences in Word document: |
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| 72 | |
| 73 | Click on image to enlarge |
| 74 | |
| 75 | So that is a point, Compare Suite is a must-have solution to compare files as it was created for getting knowledge from two files that you deals with in office. It is the best solution for analyzing documents that involve financial, human resource managing or sales information. |
| 76 | |
| 77 | More information about comparing .doc files with Compare Suite in frequently asked questions: |
| 78 | |
| 79 | Questions concerned comparing of MS Office (.doc) files |
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| 81 | |
| 1 | How to compare Word files |
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| 5 | Compare It! can compare files of Microsoft Word 97 (.doc files) and higher by converting them to text format. You don't need to have MS Office/Word installed - Compare It! converts texts independently. Please note that only text is extracted, without formatting - so you will not see changes in formatting. |
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| 7 | Due to nature of .doc files, each paragraph is presented as single line in resulting text file. While you can use word wrapping feature of Compare It!, this format still can be inconvenient, so you can make Compare It! to automatically wrap converted text in one of two ways: |
| 8 | |
| 9 | wrap by column - wrap at column 80, similarly as Word does. The drawback of this approach is confused comparison, if changes made cause different wrapping. |
| 10 | wrap by sentence - wrap after a dot ('.'). This unique wrapping mode looks unusual at first, but in fact it gives easiest to use comparison results. You should definitely try this mode. |
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| 12 | As with all converted files, you can not edit or merge .doc files - file comparison is read only and your abilities are limited to reviewing changes. |
| 13 | |
| 14 | To control automatic Word files conversion |
| 15 | Choose Options > Options, page General. |
| 16 | Use View .DOC files as text checkbox to enable this feature. |
| 17 | Use Wrap paragraph text checkbox to specify whether text should be wrapped during conversion. |
| 18 | With default settings, Compare It! will enable .doc files comparison with "Wrap by column" option. |
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| 20 | What is the difference between built-in word wrapping and .doc files wrapping? |
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| 23 | With standard word wrapping (menu View > Wordwrap), line numbering is not changed - you just see text wrapping to fit in pane width. You can switch this mode on and off dynamically, you can resize pane and get text re-arranged. With .doc wrapping, text line can be really broken to several lines, changing total number of lines in file. You can not change this wrapping without rescanning file. |
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