Open ms word in "compare document" mode from command prompt.

Question

I am working on a web project where client needs a functionality to first upload some MS word document & then he can compare any two of the uploaded documents.

The idea I came up with is to first make the documents available using WEBDAV & then open both documents using command line with "Compare side by side" option. In this way he will be able to compare & modify two documents.

The problem is, I am not able to find any command which can be run from command prompt to open two documents in compare mode.

Also, if you know any other way to achieve this functionality then please share it with me.

Thanks!

Answer 1

I've looked at the list of command line switches and I didn't see anything relevant.

You could create a console application in .net that opens Word, loads in the 2 documents and switches Word to the compare documents viewmode. Instead of launching Word directly from the command line you launch your application.

Answer 2

I simply use the TortoiseSVN diff scripts for this purpose. These are just .js-files, which support some formats (doc/docx, for instance) and open them, turning the application (MS Word) into compare mode. The syntax is pretty clear:
>diff-doc.js file1.doc file2.doc