Diff for Excel

Those who work with Excel spreadsheets know how cumbersome and tedious comparing different versions of the same book can be.

But if the spreadsheets in the book have a hundred columns with thousands of rows, the task of comparing the two, cell by cell, is unbearable, and in no way practical – it just takes too much time, and there is no guarantee that all possible mistakes have actually been spotted. Diff for Excel is the tool that all Excel users have always wished to have in the Microsoft application itself - this type of utility is present in other Office products, such as Word to compare and combine text documents, and though it makes as much sense here as it does for Word, Excel users need to go out and get a different tool, such as Diff for Excel.

This neat piece of software is fast, very easy to learn and use, flexible, and, what is more important, realy effective. It does not matter how many rows and columns you are working with, Diff for Excel will deal with them in seconds/minutes. You decide if you want to compare the full spreadsheet, a range of columns, rows, or a specific range of both and you can align them in any way you wish (a very useful feature, especially when you have already found out that the number of rows or columns of both spreadsheets do not match). You can compare the values or the formulas, and when those details are important, you may also want to have a perfect match considering both cell format and case.

Apart from other considerations, what makes Diff for Excel stand out from the rest is the layout of the final report – unlike similar add-ins, this tool shows you a replica of the original Excel spreadsheet, instead of the cryptic text reports you find in other tools. The program will check for inserted, removed, and modified cells, showing each of them with a different color and/or border (all these attributes are fully customizable). Thus, you will be able to see in just a glance a new spreadsheet (in a format you are already familiar with) with just those rows which showed some inconsistency. From here, you will be able to quickly locate in the original book those cells you need to change.