Compare and merge two versions of a document (2024)

FAQs

Compare and merge two versions of a document? ›

Merge two versions of a document

Open one of the two versions of the document that you want to compare. On the Review menu, select Compare Documents. In the Original document list, select the original document. In the Revised document list, browse to the other version of the document, and then select OK.

To compare documents, make sure both files are open. In the “Review” tab, click the “Compare” button. A new window will open – select the original document as the first file and the revised version as the second. Double-check your selections before proceeding.

Compare Versus Merge

When you compare two document versions, the revised document version is considered as a baseline for tracking changes. When you merge two document versions with changes to the same content, the edits of both the original and revised content is displayed.

When you need to compare two documents side by side, iDox.ai is the fastest and simplest way to do it. Just upload your PDF or Word documents and see detailed differences in just seconds! With our platform, you can compare any two versions of your document to ensure that the final is what you expect.

Answer: After you send a document out for review you might get a lot of copies back with suggestion and revisions you don't want to miss. When that happens combine all those edits and ideas into one document.

What is an example of a situation which may require you to merge two documents? ›

Maybe you're a journalist and you need to bundle multiple news reports together into a single Word document. Or maybe you're a marketing executive. You've created a few sales brochures that you want to combine in a single file and show to your clients.

The point of merging is to combine the changes of both contributors into a new, complete revision of the document. The merging process compares what was changed in each version of the document, and tries to automatically create a new document combining all changes from all editors.

To merge documents in Word while preserving all the track changes, follow these steps: Within your version of the document, select the “Review” tab. Click “Compare” and then choose “Combine”.

Go to the Review tab > Compare. In the Compare drop-down menu, click on Combine... In the “Combine Documents” dialog box that appears, select your files accordingly from the drop-down menus – the Original document and the Revised document. You can also select options on how revisions appear for easier merging.

This is down to a mixture of the length of DNS name, user's name and path to the file being over 256 characters that Microsoft Word compare cannot deal with. This combination will make the ultimate comparison string over 256 characters and MS Word compare will fail.

Compare two files (command-line)

From the Developer Command Prompt, use the /Diff ( -diff ) option.

Simply drag and drop the files from your computer to the correct side, or click on 'choose file' to locate the documents. Then select the Compare option. Now, you'll be able to see the comparison markup page. This review tab shows you all of the changes that have been made to your files.