Compare Suite Makes It Easy To Compare Files

Comparing the content of multiple files can be a tedious endeavor. Writers and editors may wish to keep track of changes before committing to a finished piece. Webmasters may strive to find the differences or similarities between two web pages to get the general meaning between the two.

Compare Suite is a file compare utility that makes these tasks very easy, allowing you to spend less time making comparisons and more time being productive.

As an example, I pulled content from an article on a website and saved it as my original. Then I made a copy of it and made a few changes.

As you can tell from the image above, my edits are easy to spot by their coloring. I know right where to go to see how the two files differ. Words in green are commonly used words that can be found in both files. Those in blue are unique words — ones that only exist in either the left or right document.

And while I can’t demonstrate this, I can tell you that by scrolling horizontally on one window at the bottom of the screen, both windows scroll simultaneously making it easy on me to read the content and do analysis. Notice how the lines that are modified are also outlined, so in case changes fall beyond your purview, you know to scroll over and spot them. If I wanted to, I could make edits to either file, so it’s more than just a text file compare utility, it’s a text editor, too.

If you’re interested in more than just the differences between two files, you’ll be pleased to know that the information panel (pictured above) can give you more. It tells you which file is older, how many lines were affected, and the similarity between the two in the form of a percentage. Compare Suite really does the work for you when you want to do a file compare.

But there’s more it can do. For example, you can run reports to get even more out of the comparison.

The colors are defined as follows:

• blue = added line/text
• red = deleted line/text
• green = modified line/text

So as you can see, it placed my changes side-by-side, word for word so I can really tell what’s going on. It can even go down to the character level if I wanted it to.

Compare Suite also offers you the flexibility of comparing formats beyond just text: Microsoft Word, Excel, binary, and even PDF. Additionally, you have the option to compare entire folders of content.

Now, what if you actually wanted to commit to the changes you’ve found? Copying and pasting from one document to another would be cumbersome, but with Compare Suite you can select the text in one file and right-click to give you the option to apply, delete or insert the change into the other file.

This is a pretty powerful utility and you can download a free 30-day trial to see it for yourself.

Popularity: 5% [?]

• WinZip Offers New Service: The maker of WinZip, the popular file compression utility, has joined forces with YouSendIt, the easy way to send large files via email, to provide...
• WebAsyst: A Collaborative Tool With Punch: There are a lot of online offerings out there that help you stay organized and allow you to collaborate with others. WebAsyst is a little...
• Free Text Editors That Fit Your Writing Habits: There are a gazillion text editors available, which is amazing when you think about it. How much can you improve on a tool designed to...