WCT - Compare and merge Microsoft® Excel® workbooks

How Workbook Comparison Tool works

How to find WCT on your PC?

WCT is an Addin for Microsoft Excel. It does not present in your Start button | All Programs list. WCT adds own menu to Excel 2000/XP/2003 and tab to ribbon in Excel 2007/2010. So, if you are using Excel 2003 there is a Compare menu near Help menu in Excel. And in Excel 2007/2010 there is a Compare and Merge tab on ribbon. Below you can see screenshot of this group.

How to use WCT to compare data?

At first your should select, what will be compared - workbooks, worksheets or specific ranges.

One worksheet is considered as older version of the document, and another one - as newer version of the file. You should decide which sheet should be treated as old and which as new document.

This is all information needed for WCT. If compares workbooks/sheets in one click!

When the comparison has been completed, you get the comparison report, like this:

This window shows list of differences on the bottom and 2 sheets on top - old sheet is shown on the left side and new sheet on the right side. Data is shown exactly as in Excel, so you can navigate through all differences and see data in same window. Both sheets are scrolled synchronously, so you can easily browse data in spreadsheets.

Change cells are marked with color in both worksheets.

• Green - added data (may appear only in right sheet)
• Red - deleted data (may appear only in left sheet)
• Blue - changed data

Example for modified data:

Deleted row (row 20 has been deleted in this example):

Modified cell:

Inserted columns (columns U has been added to workbook in this example):

Merging features:

You can activate 3-rd worksheet and move data from compared sheets into it:

You can drag and drop data between 3 worksheets. Also you can use Copy, Cut and Paste operations in same way as in Excel. Copy data from one cell and paste into anoter.

Also, WCT has some merging commands:

• Use this range - copy every cell from selected range to corresponding range in other sheet
• Use this row - Insert selected row(s) into other sheet
• Use this column - Insert selected column(s) into other sheet
• Delete - Delete selected row(s)\column(s)\range from worksheet

More information about how to merge data you can find in the WCT On-line Help Library:

• Merge Workbooks
• Quickly move data from one spreadsheet to another
• Quick Merge Toolbar

In the Difference Report Window you can use these features:

• Synchronous Selection - when range is selected in one sheet WCT selects corresponding range in another sheet.
• Synchronous Scrolling - when you scroll one sheet, WCT scrolls another one.
• Zoom - change zoom to see more data on the screen.
• Mark selected difference in Excel - cells, which are used in this difference will be marked with color in Excel.
• Mark all differences - all changed cells in all workbooks are marked with color
• Save all differences/selection on new worksheet - all differences are exported to new worksheet.
• Save all differences/selection into text file - all differences are exported into tab-delimited text file.