Comparing 2 docs

  • Thread starter Thread starter Chris
  • Start date Start date
C

Chris

Hey all,

I have been trying to determine if it is possible to
electronically compare 2 documents and "extract" the
similar words/phrases/paragraphs so that I can see how
similar the 2 docs are. To help put this into
perspective, I have a manual that my comapny has drafted
and we want to compare it to another manual that is very
similar to ours. So similar, in fact, that we believe
that it was copied, in part at least. So we want to find
out just what is copied so that it can be changed. Is
this possible? Thanks for any help.

Chris
 
Open one document, and then from the Tools menu, select Compare and merge
documents and then open the other.

Give the origin of your two documents, you may need to do it a number of
times on partial sections of the documents.

--
Please post any further questions or followup to the newsgroups for the
benefit of others who may be interested. Unsolicited questions forwarded
directly to me will only be answered on a paid consulting basis.

Hope this helps
Doug Robbins - Word MVP
 
Hi Doug,

I have tried that on a test set of docs but I am not sure
if it is doing what I want it to. It's hard to explain.
The two docs I have used are the same document but 2
different revisions, so there are differences and
similarities between them. Unfortunately, at this time I
do not have a digital copy of the 2nd manual as I am
trying to figure out if it is possible to do this
correctly before I spend the money to get it scanned in
and put in Word format (it is a 250 page doc and I only
have a flatbed scanner with a bad OCR app)
proffesionally. As well, if I do get the doc scanned, it
is not in the same format nor the same order as our
document.

When I use this Compare and Merge tool it just seems like
it is telling me what was changed from one doc to another,
not what is the same. Does this tool just look and
compare page by page? Is it telling me what is different
rather than telling me what is the same? I hope that this
is making sense. Let me know if you need clarification
and I will try my best.

Thanks.
Chris
 
There was an old DOS program that would do exactly what
you are asking, and even show the documents in split
screens with same one color, different another color,
and you could scroll one up/down until they matched up
again if there was a large break in the commons.

Any old timers out there who remember what it was?

I might have it somewhere, but GOSH, it'd be hard to
find now - esp if it's on those old, hard sectored
floppies! <g>. If I had a name though, I could look
for it. No, it wasn't as easy as 'filecomp' or
anything like that.

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