How to easily compare two Word documents

3 min read
October 3, 2016

Comparing documents can be tedious. Often, only individual words or punctuation marks differ. The disparities are hardly noticeable at first glance. Learn how you can easily compare 2 Word documents and even merge them!

How to compare 2 Word documents

 

  1. Go to the "Review" tab.

    Compare Word documents review tab

  2. There you will find the option "Compare". Click the sub-item "Compare".

    Compare two word documents

  3. The following window will open. Select the two Word documents you want to compare.

    Compare Documents adjust settings

  4. Under "More >>" you can edit the comparison settings and specify which changes should be displayed in the comparison of your Word documents. You can also specify under which name changes should be marked.

    compare word documents comparison settings

  5. If you mark the subitem "New document" under "Show changes", both the original document and the revised document remain unchanged. A new Word file opens in which all differences are marked.

    compare word documents show comparison

  6. You can now select which documents should be shown at the same time by going into the "Review" tab, clicking "Compare" in selecting the subitem "Show source documents"  In the screenshot above "Show both" is activated.

    compare two word documents show source documents

  7. You can also hide both source documents so that you can continue correcting the file with the comparisons alone.

    compare two word documents hide source documents

 

Compare and merge Word documents

Word also offers the function of directly merging documents as part of the comparison.

  1. To do this, as with the comparison, open the "Review" tab and select "Compare". However, here you click on the second sub-item, "Combine".

    compare two word documents combine

  2. Again, a window opens and you can specify settings.

    compare two word documents comparison settings combine

  3. The merged document will open.

compare two word documents merged document

I hope we were able to simplify the comparison of your Word documents for you with our Office tip!

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