File Compare Tool

If you’ve ever needed to compare two text files you’ll know it can be tedious – but what you may not know is Notepad++ can do this, and do it quite well.

If you’re not already familiar with Notepad++, it is a text editor designed for coding. This small piece of software has big features, such as allowing you to view code with colour styling and line numbers to make the code easier to read and debug.

File Compare Tool

The file types addressed by individual file comparison apps varies, but may include text, symbols, images, audio, or video. This category of software tool is often called 'file comparison' or 'diff tool', but those effectively are equivalent terms — where the term 'diff' is more commonly associated with the Unix diff utility. Nov 15, 2018 Comparing text files is easy, but comparing Excel files not so much. The fact that Excel is a two dimensional grid with formulas that contain relative cell references makes it quite a challenge. Accordingly, there are only a few tools available that claim to do the job. Let’s see what our options are! In the first part of the post, we’re comparing the features of the tested tools before we. Diffchecker is a diff tool to compare text differences between two text files. Enter the contents of two files and click Find Difference Try our desktop app Offline mode, advanced features and more.

How to compare two text files using Notepad++

Robocopy is an amazing tool to compare & sync files in two folders (along with sub-folders several levels deep) and list out the differences in a log file. Synchronize folders using Robocopy To synchronize folders ( only from the left → right folder) with RoboCopy, use the same command-line syntax we used earlier to compare folders, but this.

These instructions have been written for Notepad++ v7.8.2.

Step 1: Install Compare plugin

File Compare Tool Download Mac

  1. Open Notepad++
  2. Click on the ‘Plugins’ then ‘Plugins Admin’
  3. A list of available plugins will appear
  4. TIP: if the list is empty you need to check your Internet connection or proxy settings.
  5. Either search or scroll until you see ‘Compare’
  6. Place a tick next to the name then click on the ‘Install’ button
  7. Once the plugin is installed you will be prompted to restart Notepad++
  8. Click ‘Yes’ to finish the install.

File Compare Tool Download

Step 2: Compare two files using Notepad++ Compare plugin

  1. Now that the Compare plugin has been installed, open two files
  2. Click on the ‘Plugins’ menu then ‘Compare’ and ‘Compare’ again
  3. The files will be displayed, side by side, with the differences highlighted

Please note: it helps to keep the ‘old’ copy of your file on the left and the ‘new’ on the right – this should help with understanding how the plugin shows the difference between files.

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