The following question came from one of our graduate students working on the E3Link Project that connects students in Algeria with students in the United States. It is applicable to anyone that has tried to compare two versions of the same document.

Question: How can I tell what changes have been made between this document that you sent and the previous one that I was working on?

Answer: Word 2003 has included two new or updated features called Compare and Merge Documents and Compare Side By Side. Either of these tools is great for anyone that is working on documents as a team. If more than one team member sends you the same document with changes you can now compare them side by side or compare and merge these documents into one. Below are instructions on how to use both of these features.

Compare Documents:

1. Open the two versions of the document you want to compare and select Window > Compare Side by Side.
2. Word will fit both documents on the screen with each document fitting in one half of the screen. Scroll through one document and the other document will scroll as well, making it possible to browse through two documents at the same time.

Compare and Merge Documents:

1. Open the original document and go to Tools > Compare and Merge Documents
2. A dialog box will appear. Select the other version of the document you want to compare and merge. (Note: there is a drop down arrow on the Merge button. If you click the arrow you will get three choices: Merge, Merge into current document, or Merge into new document. The Merge option opens the other version of the document indicating the changes between the two versions. The Merge into current document option has the changes show up in the file you already have open. The last choice, Merge into new document, creates a new document that you can save leaving your original and modified documents untouched.)
3. Any changes between the two documents will be displayed. You can accept or delete each of the changes individually or as a whole using the Track Changes toolbar or by right clicking on each of the changes.

–Carrie Albin, Outreach Coordinator and Co-Editor

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 10th, 2007 at 8:34 pm and is filed under Q&A Ask the Experts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.