Document compare is wrong on large docs (Word 2000/SR1)

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On large documents the document.compare method fails to correctly show the differences. Is there a fix out there are is there another method or way to compare two documents?

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There are third-party tools such as DeltaView.

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There are third-party tools such as DeltaView.

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If you just want to check if there are differences at all, or only expect few differences, you could also try to make it easy on Word.
Save both files as plain text files, and then compare those.
Of course, this wouldn’t allow you to directly edit the “merged” doc, or accept/reject changes directly.
And you might still run into the (undocumented) limits.

Klaus

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If you just want to check if there are differences at all, or only expect few differences, you could also try to make it easy on Word.
Save both files as plain text files, and then compare those.
Of course, this wouldn’t allow you to directly edit the “merged” doc, or accept/reject changes directly.
And you might still run into the (undocumented) limits.

Klaus

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It got much worse going to 2000 from 97, particularly if there are any tables. Often it crosses out the entire document and inserts it again. Grumble, grumble.

If any of your colleagues have 97 or XP, you could see if they have better luck.

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I was experiencing the strikeout/ / reinsert most of the document problem with several clients. It even did this when it was plain text. I finally figured it out. For “whatever” reason this seems to happen when a person uses empty paragraph marks (enter enter) to create extra space between paragraphs. Remove the empty paragraphs and it compares just fine.

This is yet another reason to use styles in Word. Now they use styles with a “space after” paragraph format to get the extra spacing between paragraphs and all is fine.

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I was experiencing the strikeout/ / reinsert most of the document problem with several clients. It even did this when it was plain text. I finally figured it out. For “whatever” reason this seems to happen when a person uses empty paragraph marks (enter enter) to create extra space between paragraphs. Remove the empty paragraphs and it compares just fine.

This is yet another reason to use styles in Word. Now they use styles with a “space after” paragraph format to get the extra spacing between paragraphs and all is fine.

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It got much worse going to 2000 from 97, particularly if there are any tables. Often it crosses out the entire document and inserts it again. Grumble, grumble.

If any of your colleagues have 97 or XP, you could see if they have better luck.

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I found the WordXP document comparison a significant improvement over the previous versions. Microsoft had rewritten the tool, and it is more reliable.

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