In Side by Side, Compare reads both documents and lists every difference, marked on the pages of both halves.
Steps
- Open Side by Side with the two documents (Review › Compare…). See "Compare two documents side by side".
- Choose Compare. While it works, the bar shows how far it has got; choose Stop to stop.
- The Differences list opens with a short note on what is compared, then shows each change with the pages it is on, left and right.
- Choose a change to take both halves to it. Its marks are drawn stronger than the others. For a page only one document has, the other half goes to the place the page would be.
What is compared
- Text changed: the words that differ, each word marked on its own where each document has it, so a word kept between two changes stays unmarked.
- Moved: text that is the same but sits somewhere else on the page.
- Page size changed: a page that is bigger or smaller in one document.
- Annotation added, Annotation removed and Annotation changed: comments and marks, including a changed note or colour.
- Picture changed: images and drawings that differ, where no text change explains them.
- Page added and Page removed: pages only one document has. The pages after them are still matched to their counterparts, so one added page does not make every later page look different.
Good to know
- Pages are matched by what is on them, not by their number. Scanned pages with no text are matched by how they look.
- If no page matches, the list says so: These documents have no pages in common. They look like different documents. Every page is then listed as added or removed, which is true, and not a fault in either file.
- A word is marked by its share of its line, so in some fonts a mark can sit slightly off the word.
- Very small changes to pictures can be missed.
- Up to 1,000 differences are listed.
- If a document changes while it is being compared, choose Compare again.
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