Compare Files With Free File Comparison Tool

Comparing two different versions of a file manually, in a text editor, is a tedious task. This is where open source and free tools like WinMerge helps.WinMerge is a specialized Compare and Merge Tool for Windows.It compares files by using lines of content, as its basic unit of difference.WinMerge, sometimes, treat an entire block of lines as a single difference, instead of comparing one line at a time, thereby making detection of multiple-line differences easy.

How To Compare Two Files Using WinMerge?

• Start winMerge by double-clicking WinMerge desktop shortcut icon or via Start –> all Programs –> WinMerge
• In the WinMerge window select the files that you want to compare. In the Select Files and Folders dialog, specify one file as the Left file and the other file as the Right file, and click OK. The File Compare window displays the two files in the left and right File pane

• The message in the status bar at the bottom of the WinMerge window specifies the number of differences that were detected
• Identical lines are unmarked and have white backgrounds
• WinMerge inserts one or more gray blank lines in one version of the file when the other version has more lines. These empty gray lines do not represent blank lines in the source file; but they are only placeholders in the display. The purpose of placeholder lines is to keep the left and right versions of differences vertically aligned and thereby making it easier to compare file differences
• Press Alt+Enter or Click Current Difference button. If this button is not enabled (for example, if your cursor is in a different line), press Alt+Home or click First Difference button instead.When a difference is selected, the two versions are loaded in the Diff pane. The Diff pane confirms which lines are included in a difference, and lets you examine them in isolation from the rest of the file.
• Click Next Difference in the toolbar to jump to the next line (or block of lines) that are different in the two files
• Do this to review all the differences between the two files until you reach the end of the files.Note that both panes in the File Compare window always display the same total number of lines

Wasn’t that an easy way to compare two files in Windows.Free download WinMerge from here and make your life easier in comapring two files. Currently the WinMerge installer works natively only for 32-bit Windows. There is no separate version of WinMerge for 64-bit Windows (WinXP/2003/Vista). 64-bit Windows versions can run the installer and WinMerge as 32-bit applications. For the shell Integration, the installer includes the 64-bit version of the extension.