{"id":10287,"date":"2005-11-28T12:12:14","date_gmt":"2005-11-28T17:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/buckh\/?p=10287"},"modified":"2019-05-06T12:12:57","modified_gmt":"2019-05-06T16:12:57","slug":"how-to-diff-word-documents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/buckh\/how-to-diff-word-documents\/","title":{"rendered":"How to diff Word documents"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Lawrence<\/a> responded to someone’s question about how to diff MS Word documents, and I thought the answer would help a few more folks.<\/p>\n

\n

Team Foundation enables you to specify different diff and merge tools for different file types.<\/p>\n

We don’t have a built in compare tool for .doc files but I did a quick search and found quite a few available for download (e.g. http:\/\/www.documentlocator.com\/download\/difftools.htm<\/a>). I don’t know if we have any specific recommendations.<\/p>\n

I installed DiffDoc (because it was free… http:\/\/www.softinterface.com\/MD\/MD.htm<\/a>) and configured it to be my diff tool for .doc files:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Navigate to Tools->Options->Source Control->Visual Studio Team Foundation<\/li>\n
  2. Click the Configure User Tools button<\/li>\n
  3. In the dialog that pops up, click Add<\/li>\n
  4. Enter ‘.doc’ (no apostrophes) in the Extension field to indicate you’re adding a comparison tool for .doc files<\/li>\n
  5. For the Command field, click “…” and navigate to your diff tool exe (in my case “C:Program FilesSoftinterface, IncDiffDocDiffDoc.exe”)<\/li>\n
  6. Then enter the command line parameters to drive your specific diff tool. %1 expands to be the original file, %2 expands to the new one. In this case, enter “\/M%1 \/S%2” in the Arguments text box (without the quotation marks).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    That should do it – next time you try and view a diff of .doc files, it will launch this tool and you should be able to compare them.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    John Lawrence responded to someone’s question about how to diff MS Word documents, and I thought the answer would help a few more folks. Team Foundation enables you to specify different diff and merge tools for different file types. We don’t have a built in compare tool for .doc files but I did a quick […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":10268,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

    John Lawrence responded to someone’s question about how to diff MS Word documents, and I thought the answer would help a few more folks. Team Foundation enables you to specify different diff and merge tools for different file types. We don’t have a built in compare tool for .doc files but I did a quick […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/buckh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/buckh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/buckh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/buckh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/buckh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/buckh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10287\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/buckh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/buckh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/buckh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/buckh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}