Businesses Analyst from my team keeps sending us the updated Requirements documents often and I end up hunting the recent changes by comparing the old version. Is their a good way of comparing the Word documents?
Note: We have the track changes option ON, but now the documents looks like a blood bath, complicating it much more :(
Near the "track changes" stuff there is also an option to compare documents, I believe.
Codejacked covers three different methods on how to compare word documents.
I don't know how to compare the files individually, since they are binary, but how about making a program that talks to MS Word, copying the contents of the files to a pure-text file? Then you could compare the plain-text files.
You're using the wrong tools. Through the course of my last major project, we managed to convince the entire team to move to a Wiki scheme. Not only did it make tracking changes faster and easier, but it helped organize the information better. Rather than having to keep track of arbitrary indexes in a large text document, hyperlinks were available between documents.
This meant that the documents could naturally flow from high-level to specifics. Implementation of such specs was incredibly easy in comparison to Word docs. Also, the fact that the docs were in a central location ensured that no one was still working from an out of date copy they saved to their hard drive.
I know there can be some internal resistance to moving in new directions. But if you can convince your colleagues that they should be forward thinking and always challenging themselves, they'll give it a shot and become true believers in no time flat. :-)
If you have Beyond Compare, you can diff two word documents with the help of some rules that you have to download from the developer's site and plugin. It'll then give you a text-only (without formatting) view (with some word format-gibberish that you can ignore. The differences will be highlighted and easy to find.
I made a note on how to do it here. It talks about Excel but there is a rule for Word in the same place.
If you don't have Beyond Compare... buy it! Highly recommended.. I'd struggle without it.
I use TortoiseMerge with the xdocdiff plugin to compare Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF versioned files
Use this option in Word 2003:
Tools | Compare and Merge Documents
Or this in Word 2007:
Review | Compare
It prompts you for a file with which to compare the file you're editing.
Upgrade to Word 2007, besides being much easier to use (after working out the new ribbon thing), it has a much easier to use compare function, which gives a nice clear layout of merged changes, and the before and after docs
Does Microsoft Word's compare feature account for different URLS that have identical names to click on?
If the formatting is basic, one option is to use a tool that dumps the doc to a plain text file, and then use diff as you would on any other.