Comparing Changes in Word Documents Using Google Docs

By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Aug 14, 2009

Yesterday one of my clients called to ask me for help comparing two versions of a legal document in Microsoft Word. He had sent a legal contract to someone who subsequently edited and returned the document, but without any indication of the changes made. Word does have a feature to allow you to compare two revisions of a document to find the changes, but some people find it clunky to use. I suggested an easier method that even a computer novice can do using the free Google Docs application.

You can watch the video on YouTube

The basic process in a nutshell:

1. Create a new, blank Google Docs document
3. Open the first revision of your Word Doc
4. CTRL-A inside the Word doc to select everything, then CTRL-C to copy it to the clipboard
5. Now inside your empty Google Doc, CTRL-V to paste in the contents of the Word doc
6. Now Save your Google Doc
7. Open the second revision of your Word doc
8. CTRL-A to select all of the Word text, then CTRL-C to copy to clipboard
9. Switch to your Google Docs document and CTRL-A to select all of the text
10. CTRL-V to paste the clipboard text over the selected Google Docs text
11. Save your Google Docs doc
12. Click the Tools menu in Google Docs and select Revision History
13. Check the boxes for your two most recent revisions and click Compare Checked button