It is not a surprise that document.xml is one of the files that is different: it contains the words I typed into the document and then altered:

I make sure that all comparisons are visible, and expand all subfolders: docx file is a Word document with the text 'This is test 1', the second Word document is an edited copy with the text 'This is test 2'.

xlsm, … are.įirst I have to change a setting so that WinMerge will recognize archive files like ZIP files based on their content too, and not only their extension. It is capable of comparing files stored inside archives: this is exactly what Office documents like. WinMerge is a free Windows tool to compare files. I used to do this with with zipdump.py tool, but recently, I started to use WinMerge because of its graphical user interface. Since they are ZIP containers, I have to compare the files within. There is also a DOS command ‘fc’ which will show you lines that mismatch, type “fc /?” at the command prompt to see how to use it.Sometimes I have to compare the internals of Office documents (OOXML files, e.g. Type “comp /?” at the command prompt to see how to use it. It also works well with other open source applications that work on windows, like emacs which you can use to see a nice visual colorful representation of the differences!Ĭomp is more for checking if two files are identical, rather than seeing the differences If everything fails, there’s a built-in command called “comp”. You can use diff to compare two files, or multiple files in a directory, or recursively compare two directories (not for the faint of heart!). It provides textual analysis applications like head, tail, grep and diff. In addition to those dedicated compare tools, Notepad++ ( ) has a compare feature as one of its plugins (it comes bundled initially).Īnother option is Cygwin ( ), a project who’s aim is to provide “a Linux-like environment for Windows”. It is highly useful for determing what has changed between project versions, and then merging changes between versions.”

“WinMerge is an Open Source visual text file differencing and merging tool for Win32 platforms. If your machine doesn’t already have WinDiff, it can be found in the Windows XP Service Pack 2 Support Tools.Ī more robust alternative is the Open Source WinMerge. Some Windows machines come with a basic comparison tool from Microsoft named windiff.exe.

File comparison winmerge