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Compare Documents

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About this lesson

Comparing documents takes two versions of a document and compares for changes.

Lesson versions

Multiple versions of this lesson are available, choose the appropriate version for you:

2013, 2016, 2019/365.

Exercise files

Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ Word documents from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.

Compare Documents - Exercise 1.docx
110.5 KB
Compare Documents - Exercise 2.docx
110.3 KB
Compare Documents - Solution.docx
112.1 KB

Quick reference

Compare Documents

Comparing documents takes two versions of a document and compares for changes. The Track Changes feature is applied and allows you to accept or reject the changes.

When to use

Any time a document has to be checked side-by-side for changes, this is an electronic task that can be done in seconds.

Instructions

Review Ribbon, Compare

Open the two documents:

  1. Click Compare and open the two documents, Original and Revised, click OK.
  2. A brand new document is created and named “Document1”
  3. Track Changes has now been applied to the document and you can use the features in the previous Track Changes lesson to manage the file.
  4. To view the changes in a pane rather than on the actual document screen, Click “Reviewing Pane” and choose Vertical or Horizontal.
  5.  When finalizing a document, click the Accept/Reject buttons and the markup lines in the left margin will disappear.
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  • 00:05 All right, in this lesson, we're going to talk about comparing documents,
  • 00:08 which is an awesome feature if you're a teacher, and
  • 00:10 you assign a homework assignment electronically.
  • 00:13 When they're done with it, you can compare their version to your master, and
  • 00:17 basically correct the paper electronically.
  • 00:20 It's pretty awesome.
  • 00:21 If you're in the legal field, of course, there's two options.
  • 00:23 You can compare a new document to an old one, or you can combine two revisions
  • 00:28 of a long document into one merged document, highly advanced.
  • 00:33 You have to be really good with track changes and managing changes.
  • 00:37 It takes a little bit of time to do the combined, because it is advanced,
  • 00:40 so, today we're just going to do the compare.
  • 00:43 I'm going to go and activate on the review ribbon,
  • 00:45 I'm going to click on compare even though I have my original document
  • 00:48 open on my screen, it still wants me to choose it and go get it.
  • 00:52 So I happen to know that it is, let's see, I thought it was right here.
  • 00:57 Here we go, I want this one, and I'm going to compare it to this one right over here
  • 01:01 because I have another one right over here.
  • 01:05 Okay, after you have them chosen, you can label the changes with author,
  • 01:10 or you can change that to whatever you want.
  • 01:14 I do want to point out there's this little button hovering right here.
  • 01:17 Never ignore it.
  • 01:18 These buttons that say More, or Options, always click them so
  • 01:22 you can see what else you can do in here, okay?
  • 01:24 Got a few more options, it's worth reading through these, mostly right here,
  • 01:29 show the changes in the original, in the revised, or brand new document.
  • 01:33 I'm going to leave that one there, so
  • 01:35 you can see the end result will be in a brand new document.
  • 01:38 I'll go ahead and click okay, and
  • 01:40 it is actually doing the work, and keep an eye on the title bar right up here.
  • 01:45 The title bar shows Compare Result 1.
  • 01:48 It basically tells you, right in front of us on the title,
  • 01:53 that this is a comparison document.
  • 01:55 Now, this whole screen looks a little crazy right now
  • 01:58 because it invoked the track changes feature.
  • 02:01 Notice my track changes the reviewing pane is on, which is right over here.
  • 02:06 And I would have to go through and accept changes or reject them at this point.
  • 02:10 So because it does look a little confusing, I can scroll through,
  • 02:14 and actually, I'm just going to go and turn off that pane.
  • 02:17 Now, on the left, this is the compared document.
  • 02:21 On the right, I have two panels.
  • 02:22 One says Original, one says Revised, this is the final compared one.
  • 02:27 So it went out and
  • 02:28 found the changes, then it is showing me in one nice place how everything works.
  • 02:32 Now it's up to me to go through and accept changes or reject them,
  • 02:36 or maybe I just want to print this the way it is.
  • 02:39 If I'm a teacher, I'm just going to print this and
  • 02:41 see if they are the same as what I expected the changes to be made.
  • 02:44 So, it's that easy to do this feature, but again,
  • 02:48 it's just one of those things you have to know even exists in order to use it.
  • 02:53 So again, that is the compare section, and
  • 02:56 it does kind of play a role with track changes, even though my track
  • 02:59 changes button isn't on, as you can see, that's exactly what happened.
  • 03:03 Crossed out the old, showed the change right there,
  • 03:06 it's either right or it's wrong.
  • 03:08 You will decide when you accept it.
  • 03:10 Okay.
  • 03:11 Thank you.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.

Track Changes
4m:51s
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