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Compare Side By Side

Word and Excel 2003 have a feature you’ll love if you have to compare versions of a document or compare one worksheet in a workbook to another worksheet. It’s called Compare Side By Side. The feature makes one view track its complement as the cursor moves throughout the document.



In Excel, if you’d like to compare two worksheets within the same workbook, you need to create a new Window. Go to Window… New Window.

It seems like nothing happens, but if you go back to Window, you’ll see that there are now two windows with almost the same name: SidebySide.xls:1 and SidebySide.xls:2.

They are two views of the same data, but you can operate on them individually. For example, in one window you can choose Sheet1 and in the other you can choose Sheet2.

Also notice that the Window menu now contains an option that says Compare Side By Side with SidebySide.xls:1.

The default side by side view (curiously enough) is horizontally oriented. If a vertical orientation is more useful to you, go back to Window one more time and choose Arrange..., and then choose Vertical, If you have other workbooks open, click the box that says Windows of Active Workbook.

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Now that the window is set up, move the cursor around in the worksheet. As the cursor goes off the screen to the right in the active worksheet, the ‘side-by-side’ worksheet scrolls to the right as well. As you move down the sheet, the second sheet moves to keep pace.

It’s easier to watch than to read about, so take a look at the Tips and Tricks videos section of our website for the exact steps—see Side By Side comparison in both Windows Media and Real Player formats.

You can perform the same function in Word. It’s more likely that you will compare two versions of a document rather than two sheets in the same document, so go to Word and open the first file, then go to Open again and open the second file.

While there are two documents open, you should see Compare Side By Side in the Word Window menu—it looks exactly the same as it does in Excel.

The same behavior applies to Word as to Excel. While you have Compare Side by Side open, the cursor movements in one window control the view of both windows.

When you’re through with the comparison, you can close the view by go to Window and close Side by Side. You may also have a floating toolbar with a close side by side button you can use.
 
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References

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