In direct response to user feedback, the Draftable team has built a dedicated comparison algorithm to compare Excel files and produce an Excel file with changes shown as redlined markup.
This is now available to all customers from Draftable version 24.9.1. You can read more about the Redline in Excel Comparison Type and functionality in our September Release Notes.
Draftable Legal also supports Excel file comparisons via two other approaches:
- Using the Side by Side comparison type (Recommended)
- Using Excel's Native Spreadsheet Compare (requires Office Professional Plus 2013, Office Professional Plus 2016, Office Professional Plus 2019, Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise (formerly Office 365 ProPlus)).
This article shows you how to run both of these comparisons.
Video Resource: This topic is included in our specially crafted explainer video, accessible via this link.
How to compare Excel files in the Side by Side Comparison Type
- Open the Draftable Legal New Comparison window
- Select the two documents you want to compare, either by browsing your files or dragging and dropping them into the compare window.
- Once the documents are selected, tick the box for Side by Side in the comparison type row.
- Click the Compare button to run the comparison. When the comparison is complete, it will open in the Draftable Comparison Viewer with the older Excel file on the left and newer on the right. Side by side comparisons show changes using highlights instead of redline markup.
Reviewing your comparison in Draftable
- The Comparison Viewer shows all changes in a dynamic Change List on the right-hand side of the screen.
- You can scroll through the Change List and click on any change to jump to its location and have the change highlighted with a blue box on both versions shown.
- Users can tag changes by selecting the Tag Icon on the top right corner of the individual change card in the change list. This will display a list of 5 tagging options to choose from. Multi-tagging of changes is also possible.
- Users can also leave Notes on changes by selecting the Change Card, writing a note at the bottom of the card and hitting Enter to save the Note.
- Users can filter changes by using the Interactive Filter Menu, available at the top of the change list. This can be opened by selecting the Details drop-down menu in the top right corner of the Change List.
- Users can see filtering options by selecting either the Only Show or Do Not Show entry forms. This will display a list of filtering options including Change Type, Style Changes, Tags and Notes.
- Once all review of changes is completed, users can share the comparison along with any Tags and Notes with colleagues or external parties via the many different output options shown in the ribbon menu.
- To share specifically changes in notes and tags made in the comparison, ensure you click on the Changes Report option, in the many different output options.
- A drop-down list will provide options to export changes as a DOCX or exporting to a .csv using either the All changes or the Matching filters.
Saving / printing / sharing your Excel comparison as a PDF
To save, print or email the Side by Side comparison, note all the export options at the top of the comparison viewer as a ribbon menu.
These options allow you to quickly and easily share your Excel comparison results via your preferred method or DMS. A quick summary of these options are:
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Open the results directly in your preferred Word processor or PDF reader.
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Save the comparison result to your computer.
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Save to DMS, e.g. iManage, NetDocuments
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Print a hard copy of the comparison results.
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Copy to Clipboard and save the comparison output to your clipboard.
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Email the comparison results and/or the input documents using Outlook.
For more information about these specific output options, please see our Using Draftable section of our Knowledgebase.
How to compare Excel files using Excel's Native Comparison Tool (Spreadsheet Compare)
For users who wish to run an Excel comparison to continue working in Excel, a Side-by-side comparison may not be suitable. In these cases, Draftable offers comparisons via Excel's native Spreadsheet Compare solution. This section outlines how to use this feature.
Note: Spreadsheet Compare via Draftable is only available with Office Professional Plus 2013, Office Professional Plus 2016, Office Professional Plus 2019. To learn more about this product visit Microsoft's overview of Spreadsheet Compare.
- Open the Draftable New Comparison Window
- Load your Excel input files, set the Comparison Type to Native in MS Office and hit Compare
- After running the comparison, the comparison file will open directly to Spreadsheet Compare.
- Once open, users can navigate changes made between both Excel documents with ease. Firstly, as shown in the image below the left (highlighted red) and right (highlighted yellow) Excel documents are shown in their windows inside the Spreadsheet Compare tool.
Both of these windows are navigable, and make it easy to see what items have changed by noting the highlighted cells. - Specific details of the changes can be seen in the bottom section, pictured below. This is a change list of all the different changes found between the Excel documents. This is useful if you need to see formulas within the comparison and see even more detail then what is seen in the normal side-by-side comparison.
Each change identifies which cell the change was found, what the values were and the a description of the change identified. - On the bottom left side of Spreadsheet Compare you have the option of enabling and disabling what changes are shown. In essence, this is a filter of what changes you see within your Spreadsheet Compare comparison. See the image pictured below for what feature looks like.
- Lastly, if you wish to condense all the changes into a single report, on the top toolbar in the Home section, you have the option to export the results of our Spreadsheet Compare to share.