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About this lesson
Comparing documents takes two versions of a document and compares for changes.
Lesson versions
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Exercise files
Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ Word documents from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.
Compare Documents - Exercise 1.docx110.5 KB Compare Documents - Exercise 2.docx
110.3 KB Compare Documents - Solution.docx
112.1 KB
Quick reference
Compare Documents
Comparing documents takes two versions of a document and compares for changes. The Track Changes feature is applied and allows you to accept or reject the changes.
When to use
Any time a document has to be checked side-by-side for changes, this is an electronic task that can be done in seconds.
Instructions
Review Ribbon, Compare
Open the two documents:
- Click Compare and open the two documents, Original and Revised, click OK.
- A brand new document is created and named “Document1”
- Track Changes has now been applied to the document and you can use the features in the previous Track Changes lesson to manage the file.
- To view the changes in a pane rather than on the actual document screen, Click “Reviewing Pane” and choose Vertical or Horizontal.
- When finalizing a document, click the Accept/Reject buttons and the markup lines in the left margin will disappear.
- 00:05 All right, in this lesson, we're going to talk about comparing documents,
- 00:08 which is an awesome feature if you're a teacher, and
- 00:10 you assign a homework assignment electronically.
- 00:13 When they're done with it, you can compare their version to your master, and
- 00:17 basically correct the paper electronically.
- 00:20 It's pretty awesome.
- 00:21 If you're in the legal field, of course, there's two options.
- 00:23 You can compare a new document to an old one, or you can combine two revisions
- 00:28 of a long document into one merged document, highly advanced.
- 00:33 You have to be really good with track changes and managing changes.
- 00:37 It takes a little bit of time to do the combined, because it is advanced,
- 00:40 so, today we're just going to do the compare.
- 00:43 I'm going to go and activate on the review ribbon,
- 00:45 I'm going to click on compare even though I have my original document
- 00:48 open on my screen, it still wants me to choose it and go get it.
- 00:52 So I happen to know that it is, let's see, I thought it was right here.
- 00:57 Here we go, I want this one, and I'm going to compare it to this one right over here
- 01:01 because I have another one right over here.
- 01:05 Okay, after you have them chosen, you can label the changes with author,
- 01:10 or you can change that to whatever you want.
- 01:14 I do want to point out there's this little button hovering right here.
- 01:17 Never ignore it.
- 01:18 These buttons that say More, or Options, always click them so
- 01:22 you can see what else you can do in here, okay?
- 01:24 Got a few more options, it's worth reading through these, mostly right here,
- 01:29 show the changes in the original, in the revised, or brand new document.
- 01:33 I'm going to leave that one there, so
- 01:35 you can see the end result will be in a brand new document.
- 01:38 I'll go ahead and click okay, and
- 01:40 it is actually doing the work, and keep an eye on the title bar right up here.
- 01:45 The title bar shows Compare Result 1.
- 01:48 It basically tells you, right in front of us on the title,
- 01:53 that this is a comparison document.
- 01:55 Now, this whole screen looks a little crazy right now
- 01:58 because it invoked the track changes feature.
- 02:01 Notice my track changes the reviewing pane is on, which is right over here.
- 02:06 And I would have to go through and accept changes or reject them at this point.
- 02:10 So because it does look a little confusing, I can scroll through,
- 02:14 and actually, I'm just going to go and turn off that pane.
- 02:17 Now, on the left, this is the compared document.
- 02:21 On the right, I have two panels.
- 02:22 One says Original, one says Revised, this is the final compared one.
- 02:27 So it went out and
- 02:28 found the changes, then it is showing me in one nice place how everything works.
- 02:32 Now it's up to me to go through and accept changes or reject them,
- 02:36 or maybe I just want to print this the way it is.
- 02:39 If I'm a teacher, I'm just going to print this and
- 02:41 see if they are the same as what I expected the changes to be made.
- 02:44 So, it's that easy to do this feature, but again,
- 02:48 it's just one of those things you have to know even exists in order to use it.
- 02:53 So again, that is the compare section, and
- 02:56 it does kind of play a role with track changes, even though my track
- 02:59 changes button isn't on, as you can see, that's exactly what happened.
- 03:03 Crossed out the old, showed the change right there,
- 03:06 it's either right or it's wrong.
- 03:08 You will decide when you accept it.
- 03:10 Okay.
- 03:11 Thank you.
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