3/17 Is there a way to compare differences between two substantially
similar Excel and/or Powerpoint documents other than going through
them manually?
\_ In Excel 2003, there is a "Compare and Merge Workbooks..." option
under the Tools menu. (But for some reason it is greyed out in my
Excel 2003.) In PowerPoint 2003 there is "Compare and Merge
Presentations...". I've never used either, though.
\_ Sounds great, but I cannot find this in Office 2004 for Mac.
\_ Search for "merge workbooks" in Excel help, it explains
what you need to do to merge two workbooks. I think you
will need to share one of your workbooks and then make
a copy of it. In the copy you need to paste in the other
workbook. Then you can use the merge feature to merge the
two together and see the changes.
\_ Save them in the office XML format and compare those with diff.
\_ How do I save in XML? I don't see that as an option.
\_ AFAIK, you need Office 2007/2008 to export to XML. Earlier
versions don't support XML.
\_ I thought you could always save in some sort of text
format (tab delimited or whatever). I'd look for that.
\_ For Excel you can but it is primitive. For Powerpoint,
I dunno.
\_ I think all versions of Excel can export to comma
separated and tab delimited text files, but it can
be pretty hard to compare these files.
\_ My wife who's an accountant asked me the same question back when
Excel 2000 was the latest version, and here's the solution I
figured:
1. Open the two files in Excel, say foo.xls and bar.xls.
2. Find out how many rows and columns there are in Sheet 1 in
foo.xls and bar.xls.
3. Create a new file.
4. For Sheet 1, Cell A1 in the new file, enter
=EXACT([foo.xls]Sheet1!A1,[bar.xls]Sheet1!A1)
5. Highlight Cell A1, click Edit -> Copy.
6. Highlight the same number of rows and columns as in foo.xls and
bar.xls.
7. Click Edit -> Paste.
8. Click Edit -> Find. Under "Look in:", choose "Values".
9. Under "Find what:", enter "false", click "Find All".
You'll have to repeat this if there are multiple sheets in foo.xls
and bar.xls. You'll have to replace EXACT() with another function
if you want case-insensitive comarison or if you want to find
formatting differences.
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