How to diff Word documents
John Lawrence responded to someone's question about how to diff MS Word documents, and I thought the answer would help a few more folks.
Team Foundation enables you to specify different diff and merge tools for different file types.
We don’t have a built in compare tool for .doc files but I did a quick search and found quite a few available for download (e.g. http://www.documentlocator.com/download/difftools.htm). I don’t know if we have any specific recommendations.
I installed DiffDoc (because it was free… http://www.softinterface.com/MD/MD.htm) and configured it to be my diff tool for .doc files:
- Navigate to Tools->Options->Source Control->Visual Studio Team Foundation
- Click the Configure User Tools button
- In the dialog that pops up, click Add
- Enter ‘.doc’ (no apostrophes) in the Extension field to indicate you’re adding a comparison tool for .doc files
- For the Command field, click “…” and navigate to your diff tool exe (in my case “C:\Program Files\Softinterface, Inc\DiffDoc\DiffDoc.exe”)
- Then enter the command line parameters to drive your specific diff tool. %1 expands to be the original file, %2 expands to the new one. In this case, enter "/M%1 /S%2" in the Arguments text box (without the quotation marks).
That should do it – next time you try and view a diff of .doc files, it will launch this tool and you should be able to compare them.
