How to Use the Microsoft Word Compare Feature to Track Document Changes

Collaborating on complex Microsoft Word documents can quickly become chaotic if contributors forget to turn on “Track Changes” before making edits. When a colleague emails you a revised version of a document, figuring out exactly what they added, deleted, or reformatted can be a tedious manual process. Fortunately, Word includes a built-in Compare feature that automatically analyzes two documents and generates a comprehensive markup of every single difference.

How the Compare Feature Works

The Compare tool takes your “Original” document and the “Revised” document, analyzes them word-by-word, and creates a brand-new third document. This third document displays all the differences as standard tracked changes (red strikethroughs for deletions, underlines for additions), leaving your original files completely untouched.

How to Compare Two Documents

Follow these steps to generate a comparison document:

1. Open Microsoft Word. You can start with a blank document; you do not need to have either of the files open.
2. Navigate to the Review tab on the Ribbon.
3. In the “Compare” group, click the Compare button, then select Compare… from the drop-down menu.
4. The “Compare Documents” dialog box will appear.
   • In the Original document section on the left, click the folder icon to browse and select your original file.
   • In the Revised document section on the right, browse and select the modified file you received.
5. (Optional) By default, Word compares everything. If you only care about text changes and want to ignore formatting tweaks (like someone changing the font size), click the More >> button and uncheck “Formatting”.
6. Under the “Show changes in” section, ensure New document is selected.
7. Click OK.

Reviewing the Output

Word will generate a new document containing three distinct panes:

• The Center Pane: This shows the merged document with all the changes marked up, exactly as if “Track Changes” had been used during the editing process.
• The Right Pane (Split): This displays the Original document on top and the Revised document on the bottom for quick visual reference.
• The Left Pane (Reviewing Pane): This provides a summarized list of every revision, categorizing them by insertions, deletions, and formatting changes.

You can now use the standard Accept and Reject buttons on the Review tab to go through the changes one by one. Once you are satisfied with the final result, simply save this new document as the finalized version.