Is there any Java API available to compare two microsoft word documents?

Question

I am looking for a Java API which can compare two microsoft word documents.

We are using Linux server so we can't install Microsoft Word in it.

EDIT :- We want to compare two document and what ever things are not common that we have to highlight with some color or any other way ... So I thing we have to merge both document and highlight content which are not common.

Answer 1

There is an Apache POI - Java API to do this.

Example source code is here.

I found another article doing the same thing in Java, but uses windows COM to do this. If you are using Linux, it suggests using a remote windows machine to do the work. The article contains detailed explanation: Word from Java

Answer 2

You can have a look at Aspose.Words for Java. It might be able to help you out.

Answer 3

Ms Word is not really supported in java.

you can use poi, but you wont be able to compare everything. COM control is your best chance of doing it(you might be able to use WINE on linux to emulate it).

I think your best choice is to use RTF files and iText-RTF(in MsWord you can save document as RTF). They have better support, however from my own experiance i can tell you that sometimes they render different in MsWord2003,OpenOffice and MsWord2007. So you should always check that.

You could also try OpenOffice API(ive never tried it), but there arent many resources out there to tell you how to use it.

Answer 4

If its a docx, you could use docx4j (ASL v2).

See the CompareDocuments example

Answer 5

If Office 2007 supports server mode, like OpenOffice does, you could send the stream to a network and process the results back.

You might be able to achieve what you need it with a recent version of OpenOffice too, using the UNO API.