Comparing Workbooks

Krishna asked if there was a way to compare the contents of two Excel workbooks. Unfortunately, there is no built-in comparison feature, as there is in Word to compare two documents. There are third-party programs available that can help you out, and a quick search of the Web can help to locate such programs.

Depending on your needs, there can be an easier way. If the worksheets in each workbook are laid out the same, and you just want to find differences between values in the cells of each worksheet, then you can use formulas to compare worksheets. Try the following steps:

1. Create a new workbook called Compare.xls.
2. In cell A1 of the first worksheet in Compare.xls, enter the following formula:

    =IF([WB1.xls]Sheet1!A1<>[WB2.xls]Sheet1!A1,"Different","")

These steps assume that the worksheets you want to compare are both named Sheet1, and they are in WB1.xls and WB2.xls, respectively. If you have other sheets in WB1.xls and WB2.xls to compare, you can use similar formulas in other sheets of Compare.xls.

When done, any cell that has the word "Different" in it represents a cell that is different in the ranges being compared. Thus, if C7 had "Different" in it, then there is a difference between the cell C7 of Sheet1 in WB1.xls and cell C7 of Sheet1 in WB2.xls.

If you are comparing only numeric values between the two worksheets, you could use a different formula in step 2, above:

=[WB1.xls]Sheet1!A1-[WB2.xls]Sheet1!A1

The result is a worksheet that subtracts the values in one workbook from the other, which results in the numeric differences.