Is there a way to compare two documents for differences, or at the very least, view two documents side-by-side?
I have two versions of a document I wrote years ago that at first glace appear to be the same, but one is labeled “Original” and is two days older. I do not recall what changes I made to the newer copy. It would be extremely helpful if I could compare the two side-by-side with the differences highlighted.
Not exactly answers your question but read this:
https://help.libreoffice.org/Common/Comparing_Versions_of_a_Document
Is this not what the COMPARE DOCUMENT feature provides? Open the newest version in Writer then EDIT > TRACK CHANGES > COMPARE DOCUMENT then select the older document.
See HELP > DOCUMENTS COMPARING for more information The LibreOffice Writer Guide gives quite a lot of help in this area.
Big thanks. I didn’t find anything regarding “compare” when I searched the online help. I’m glad to see that such a feature is already built in.
Thank you!
Comparison by software:
It should be rather simple to automatically find the first position in which two documents differ concerning the plain content. To find the position where a single pair of different ranges is ending and comparison should restart unbiased, may be an AI task. Regarding the thousands of attribute values that may be assigned to text portions either directly or by using styles, and to judge where “equivalent” fomatting (what’s that?) may only have used different means is next to impossible.
Comparison by eye:
You can open two documnets from the same LibO desktop, and then adjust their comtainer windows manually side by side. That’s not difficult though probably a bit annoying.