How to compare Word files

Compare It! can compare files of Microsoft Word 97 (.doc files) and higher (including docx, docm files) 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.

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:

• 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.
• 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.

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.

To control automatic Word files conversion

1. Choose Options > Options, page Converters.
2. Select MS Word converter - toggle it to change defaut handling of such files.

With default settings, Compare It! will enable .doc files comparison with "Wrap by column" option.

What is the difference between built-in word wrapping and .doc files wrapping?

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.

DocWrap feature

Now same "Wrap by sentence" rule can be applied to any file - just use View > Doc Wrap mode. However please note that since this mode significantly changes text layout, editing is not possible while it is active.

See Also

Additional files formats support

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