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.
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.