No more hours spent in difficult manual comparison. No more staring with dismay at a revised document, wondering where in the world revisions were made. With an online diff checker, checking differences between Word documents doesn’t have to be difficult!
There are a number of tools available that can help you check the differences between documents, from Microsoft Word's built-in compare documents feature to the online third-party services that offer various comparison tools. But which is the best? Here we'll look at what the best word difference checker would look like in our ideal world, and then see if we can find a text comparison service that measures up.
What the Best Difference Checker Looks Like
In our ideal world, a diff checker would be quick, accessible, and free. An online tool that requires no login would be ideal; a clean interface, without spammy advertisements, would be definitely appreciated.
When we need to compare files we need to compare them quickly, so we want a service with reliable uptime. We'd like our file comparison tool to be able to work from the original word file. A text comparison tool that requires you to paste text into a compare documents dialog box is frustrating, to say the least.
Syntax highlighting is important for a document comparison tool, and a service that can differentiate between a text difference and a formatting change would be ideal. There are times when we need to know every single space, tab, and size change; other times when we just need to compare text and check whether the meaning changed.
Good visual design that allows one to see at a glance the differences between an original document and second file would be helpful. And the ability to output a comparison document-- with changes between the two documents highlighted or otherwise noted-- would make it much easier to do collaboration, or discuss the changes made with a colleague or supervisor.
While we might work primarily with MS word, a diff checker tool that was not limited to word document comparison would definitely come in handy. There are many instances when we might want to compare what changes have been made between an MS word document draft and a pdf file, for instance, and a diff tool that can compare pdf and word documents in one click would be extremely useful.
The Best Word Difference Checker
Is there a service which ticks all the boxes? As it turns out, there is! Draftable's online Word Difference Checker allows you to compare text and formatting between two files quickly and easily, and the interface is a dream. There are no hoops to jump through: just upload your files, click compare, and your document comparison will be ready for review in less time than it takes for a quick bathroom break.
This comparison tool works for pdf documents as well as for Word. If you need to compare more text file formats, the same company makes a desktop version of the diff checker tool with extended capability.
The desktop difference checker is great for power users. But if, like me, you just need to check the differences between a couple of text documents every now and again, Draftable's Online Comparison Tool is what you need.
