Page 487 - JoFA_2022

TECHNOLOGY Q&A

MICROSOFT EXCEL

How to compare documents

Q. I sent some A. Turning on Track Changes is one of the best version your partner revised. Click OK and a new
Word documents ways to review revisions, but all is not lost if you Word window will open.
to a partner to forget to turn it on. Conveniently, Word has a func- By default, you will see four sections. The top
review. They tion that is specifically for comparing two docu- right will be your original document. The bottom
reviewed and ments. In the Ribbon, go to Review and then click right will be the version the partner marked up. If
made changes, on Compare. You are given two options, Compare you do not see the two right sections, click on Com-
but I forgot to and Combine (see the screenshot below). Note: pare again, go to Show Source Documents and
turn on Track Three additional options (Major Version, Last Ver- select Show Both. The left will be a summary of
Changes. What sion, and Specific Version) are available if the files changes, from additions and deletions to formatting
is an efficient are on a SharePoint Server or on OneDrive. Click changes. The center will be the combining of the
way to find the on Compare and a pop-up window will appear two documents, as shown in the screenshot on the
revisions? asking for the two documents that you want to next page. There will be strikethroughs for the dele-
compare. If you already have both documents open, tions and colored underlines for additions. From
then select each in the drop-down list: your original here you can review and accept changes. Right-click
in the first field and the new version in the second. on the change and choose to Accept or Reject the
Otherwise, click the folder icon to browse for the change. Treat it like reviewing a document where
original in your file system to place in the first field. you are tracking changes. If you want to add the
Repeat this for the second field, browsing for the markup balloons in the margin as Track Changes
does by default, then click the Show Markup drop-
down, highlight Balloons, and pick your favored
option.
If you want to have more control over which
features of the text you are comparing, there are op-
tions you can uncheck, and the Compare function
will ignore them. Say that you want to focus on just
the content changes and not the formatting. While
you have the Compare window open, click on the
More >> button to expand the options. Uncheck
the formatting options and changes to bold, italics,
underlines, etc. will be ignored when the documents
are processed.
One final note I want to mention is the differ-
ence between Compare and Combine. Function-
ally they are the same in that they will find the
differences in two documents and display those
changes for you to approve. The one difference,
though, is that for Combine, you can label who
authored the two documents.
This function is very narrow in its application,
but it can save you time when Track Changes was
not turned on from the beginning.
— By Wesley Hartman

42 | Journal of Accountancy November 2022