Like lots of companies I recently had to change my business plans. Not what I had expected to do, but you have to adapt and pull yourself together and develop easy to understand and fun ways to tackle time-consuming and frustrating day-to-day tasks … using webinars. Over recent months lots of people told me that one of the best Word tips was about comparing two copies of a document. At the time it was written (May 2005) the steps applied to version 2000; so time to dust it off and write how to spot the differences between two documents using Word 2007 onwards.
Here’s how:
- Open the documents that you want to compare. (Not really necessary, but I find that the easiest way.)
- On the Review tab, in the Compare group, click Compare.
- Select Compare from the drop-down list.
- Select the first version from the drop-down arrow under Original document.
- Select the modified document from the Revised document drop-down list.
- Click OK.
A new third document will list all modifications as tracked changes and the two documents that were compared are unchanged.
If you want to compare changes from a number of versions, select Combine rather than Compare in step 3. (Note to oneself … write a tip about this at some point.)
Top tips – as nominated by you!
Speaking of favourite tips like this one … Helen Percy says hers is CTRL + K. (“My all-time favourite – a quick way to put links into emails. I use this literally every day at work. It saves so much time” she wrote the other day.) Katherine Wiid told me she uses CTRL + 1 and CTRL + 2 to toggle between Outlook’s inbox and calendar, along with CTRL + N to create a new email message and CTRL + L in PowerPoint. And Mandy Allen wrote her favourite PowerPoint tip is converting an existing bulleted list to a SmartArt graphic.
What are yours? I would love to hear from you so that I can put a Top-Tips-As-Nominated-By-You together. (The top 5 as nominated by you back in 2007 can be found here.)
Related tips
Quickly spot whether change tracking is on or off
Warn before printing, saving or sending a file that contains tracked changes or comments
Show changes and comments inline instead of in balloons
Make reviewer names anonymous
Inspect your document for tracked changes
Remove – not just hide – tracked changes
Comparing two copies of a document
softwaretrainingcambridge 