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 files, selected paragraphs, or text you paste in manually.
The tool highlights all differences between the original and the modified version, indicating insertions, deletions and moved content.
Why use Text Compare?
Text Compare goes beyond Word’s built-in comparison tool. It lets you accurately compare text snippets, clauses, PDFs, and Word files with more flexibility.
✅ When to use it
Comparing different file types
Easily compare a Word document with a PDF - something Word can’t do on its own.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.
Note: In the browser version of ClauseBuddy, the first two options are not available.
2. Optional: configure the comparison
You can fine-tune how the comparison is run. All settings are optional and can be adjusted depending on what you want to review.
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 Find moved paragraphs is enabled, ClauseBuddy detects paragraphs that have been moved and highlights them in green.
If this option is disabled, moved paragraphs are shown as a deletion and an insertion.
If a paragraph was both moved and edited, it will not be marked as moved.
When Ignore formatting is checked, formatting differences (such as bold text, indentation, or spacing) are not treated as changes.
This option is enabled by default, as formatting changes are usually less relevant in legal comparisons.
You may want to disable it if you need to check whether text is formatted differently between documents.⚠️ Do not disable this option when comparing PDFs.
Because PDFs must be converted to Word, small formatting differences are very common and can create unnecessary noise.When Ignore case changes is enabled, differences in capitalisation are ignored and not treated as changes.
When Ignore headers & footers is enabled (default), changes in headers and footers are ignored. This is usually preferred, as headers and footers are often less relevant in legal document comparisons.
When Ignore tables is enabled (default), changes within tables - such as text inside table cells -are ignored. In most cases, you will want to keep this option enabled unless you specifically need to review changes inside tables.
3. Perform 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.
Comparing DOCX files is usually very fast and mainly depends on how quickly the files can be uploaded and downloaded.
Comparing PDF files can take longer, as PDFs must first be converted to Word format.
Reviewing the results
The comparison results are shown side by side, with all detected changes clearly highlighted.
At the top of the screen, you can use the following actions:
Previous change / Next change
Jump quickly between detected changes. (Moved paragraphs are not included in this navigation.)Insert
Insert the compared text into your currently open Word document. This is mainly useful when comparing individual paragraphs rather than full documents.Export to DOCX / PDF
Download the comparison results as a Word or PDF file.
Keep in mind that PDF conversion can introduce some noise - especially with scanned PDFs - which may result in small conversion or comparison inaccuracies.
An example of what the comparison may look like: