In this article:
What is Text Compare?
Text Compare lets you visually compare two pieces of text, no matter where they come from. You can compare full Word or PDF documents, selected paragraphs, or text entered manually.
The tool highlights all differences between the original and modified versions, including insertions, deletions, and moved content, making it easy to identify changes at a glance.
Why use Text Compare?
Text Compare goes beyond Word’s built-in comparison tool.
✅ When to use it
Comparing different file types
Easily compare a Word document with a PDF - something Word can’t do natively.Tracking small wording changes
Quickly spot insertions, deletions, or rewording, even in short text sections.Reviewing counterparty changes
Identify changes in a returned contract, even if the formatting or structure has changed.
❌ When not to use it
Poorly scanned PDFs
OCR errors can cause noise and inaccurate comparison results.When formatting is critical
Text Compare focuses on text changes and may not fully capture precise formatting differences.
How to use Text Compare
1. Select your text sources
Text Compare is easy to use. You simply choose one text source to compare from (the original text) and one text source to compare to (the modified text).
Each text source can be:
Your currently open document in MS Word
A selection from your open Word document
One or more paragraphs you type or paste in manually
Another Word or PDF document that you drag in or select
If needed, you can swap the order of the two text sources by clicking the swap button between them.
2. (Optional) Configure the comparison
You can customise how the comparison is performed using the following settings:
Use the Author field to specify whose name should appear as the creator of the changes.
This setting only affects DOCX exports: when you export the comparison to Word, the selected name will appear as the author of the tracked changes.
When Ignore formatting is checked, formatting differences (such as bold text, indentation, or spacing) are not treated as changes.
Disable this if formatting differences are important.
⚠️Keep this enabled when comparing PDFs, as conversion to Word can introduce formatting noise.
Ignore case changes - Ignores differences in capitalisation.
Ignore headers & footers (default: enabled) - Excludes changes in headers and footers, which are often not relevant in legal comparisons.
Ignore tables (default: enabled) - Ignores changes within tables (e.g. text inside cells). Disable this only if you need to review table content.
Ignore comments - Excludes comments from the comparison, focusing only on the main document content.
3. Run the comparison
Once you’ve selected your text sources and (optionally) adjusted the comparison settings, you’re ready to run the comparison.
Choose how the comparison results are displayed. You can view the changes side by side, showing both versions next to each other, or as a single document, where all changes are combined into one view for easier review.
Performance considerations
DOCX comparisons are typically fast and depend mainly on upload/download speed.
PDF comparisons may take longer because PDFs must first be converted to Word format.
Keep in mind that PDF conversion can introduce minor inaccuracies, especially with scanned documents.
Reviewing the results
You can use the following actions:
Previous / Next change - Navigate quickly between detected changes (note: moved paragraphs are not included in this navigation).
Insert - Insert selected compared text into your currently open Word document. This is most useful when comparing smaller text sections rather than full documents.
Export to DOCX / PDF - Download the comparison results as a Word or PDF file for sharing or further review.
