Comparing Two Documents in Word

Word makes it easy to compare two versions of a document, even if you have been working without tracking changes. You may want to compare two documents at the end of a writing cycle, rather than work with change tracking on, because change tracking can cause performance problems in large documents and may even cause Word to crash.

In these instructions, current document means the most recent revision, and original document means the version to which you are comparing the current version.

To compare two documents:

1. lose all open documents.
2. In the Ribbon, click Review > Compare. From the menu that appears, click Compare. The Compare Documents dialog box opens.
3. Select the original document and the document that you want to compare it to.
4. Select your comparison settings. Selecting only Moves and Tables, and deselecting all other options should be OK in most situations.
5. In the Show changes section, select Character level and New document.
6. Click Compare. If either of the documents contains tracked changes, you are prompted to accept them.
7. Word produces a new document, showing the changes between the current and the original document.

Word uses the Track Changes options that you have set in your copy of Word to display the changes. You set these options in the Review tab. Using an Insertions setting of Underline may be appropriate, but note that underlining generally makes blocks of text hard to read, which defeats the purpose of the review.