Compare Documents working very poorly.

[Andy]

This is odd. I have a few documents that I have been trying to compare--using
several versions of Word--and it is just not working well. What I get is for
the most part, almost every paragraph of one doc. makred as deletion, and
almost the entirety of the other marked as insertion, even though they are
about 95% the same. This makes the compare documents function pretty useless.
Since this is happening on several versions of Word, I suspect the problem is
with my files. Does anyone have any suggestions?
Thanks.

 

[grammatim]

Are they exactly the same font, size, spacing, and everything else?

 

[Andy]

Thanks for the tip, but I'm afraid that the font, size, etc. are the same.

 

[Bob Buckland ?:-\)]

Hi Andy,

Which versions are you using? Word 2007 has more granular control over what is included in the black line document created from the
comparison of two documents.

For a test, start a new document and type
=rand(10,10) {enter key}
then save the document.

Next make a change in that document (color some text, replace a word, etc).

Then use File=>Save as (or Office Button=>Save As if Word 2007) to save as a 2nd file name, then compare the two files.

What options did you choose in compare and what result do you get with the new document based on comparing the two test documents?

==============
This is odd. I have a few documents that I have been trying to compare--using
several versions of Word--and it is just not working well. What I get is for
the most part, almost every paragraph of one doc. makred as deletion, and
almost the entirety of the other marked as insertion, even though they are
about 95% the same. This makes the compare documents function pretty useless.
Since this is happening on several versions of Word, I suspect the problem is
with my files. Does anyone have any suggestions?
Thanks <<
--

Bob Buckland ?
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*.