I've seen multiple questions and answers for how to compare two Word documents, and I've seen some questions and answers for how to compare three or more raw text files, but I'm struggling to find a method to compare three or more Word documents.

I don't need the formatting compared, and I don't mind if I can't edit them or merge them, but I would like to be able to see the files' differences highlighted. I know I can copy the text into text files and use that in raw-text-only diff tools, but some of the Word docs I need to compare are quite large.

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2 Answers

The software has the option to do a 3-way File Comparison. Link to screenshot.

There are some Plugins available that might help you with the Word part of your question.

However, comparing text is probably most performant.

There is not a way that I know of to compare more than two documents at a time, onscreen side by side.

If you have multiple revision documents you can combine them into one new document, but you probably are already aware of that feature.

If you have multiple revision documents and you want to "automate" the process a bit to cut down on some of the manual input you have to do, you can use a macro like the one below.

Sub CompareDocs() Dim doc As word.Document, iDoc As word.Document, rDoc As word.Document Dim selFiles() As String, strFolderPath As String Dim Sep As String, i As Long On Error GoTo errHandler Sep = Application.PathSeparator Set doc = ActiveDocument Application.ScreenUpdating = False With Application.FileDialog(msoFileDialogFilePicker) .Title = "Select the files to compare to your source document" .InitialFileName = curDir .AllowMultiSelect = True If .Show = 0 Then Exit Sub End If ReDim Preserve selFiles(.SelectedItems.Count - 1) strFolderPath = Left(.SelectedItems(1), InStrRev(.SelectedItems(1), Sep)) For i = 0 To .SelectedItems.Count - 1 selFiles(i) = .SelectedItems(i + 1) Next End With For i = 0 To UBound(selFiles) Set iDoc = Documents.Open(selFiles(i)) Set rDoc = Application.CompareDocuments(OriginalDocument:=doc, RevisedDocument:=iDoc, _ CompareFormatting:=False, CompareComments:=False) rDoc.SaveAs2 strFolderPath & "Compared_" & iDoc.Name rDoc.Close iDoc.Close Next Application.ScreenUpdating = True MsgBox "Document Compares Complete" Exit Sub
errHandler: MsgBox Err.Description, vbCritical, "Compare Docs" Err.Clear Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub

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