Office 2007/2010 Document Plug-in for ExamDiff Pro

The new OOXML2Txt plug-in for ExamDiff Pro allows you to compare Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents created in the OpenXML format used by Office 2007 or later (in the case of Word and PowerPoint, documents are converted into plain text for comparison, and in the case of Excel, documents are converted into comma-separated format). As with other plug-ins, OOXML2Txt only extracts text, so graphical elements such as images and text formatting are not included in comparison.

OOXML2Txt is included in ExamDiff Pro 5.5 Beta. You can also install OOXML2Txt for older versions of ExamDiff Pro. However, if you are using an older (pre-5.5) version of ExamDiff Pro and you have the Unzip plug-in installed as well, you may need to remove the OpenXML name filters "*.docx,*.docm,*.dotx,*.dotm,*.xlsx,*.xlsm,*.xltx,*.xltm, *.xlam,*.pptx,*.pptm,*.potx,*.potm,*.ppam,*.ppsx,*.ppsm" from Unzip (the default behavior for previous versions of ExamDiff Pro was to use the Unzip plug-in on OpenXML files).

One feature of ExamDiff Pro that you may not be aware of is the ability to compare clipboard contents.

Comparing two clipboard fragments is easy with this feature. Open the Compare dialog, select the first clipboard fragment in whatever program you are using and click the first Select current Clipboard contents button , then select the second clipboard fragment and click the second Select current Clipboard contents button:

Note that you can also compare clipboard contents against files this way.

Two text fragments can also be compared simply by pasting clipboard contents into empty comparison panes after clicking Cancel in the Compare dialog.

For more information, read the tutorial on comparing clipboard contents.

Ignoring certain lines (with the Ignore options under View | Options | Compare) can be useful in only isolating the most significant differences, but there are situations where you want ignored lines that are immediately above or below a diff block to be copied as part of a Replace Block operation. The next version of ExamDiff Pro will add the option to copy these adjacent ignored lines as part of such an operation.

As an example, suppose that I'm comparing two files with blank lines ignored. As you can see, the selected difference has a blank line underneath it in the left pane but not in the right pane:

When I copy the selected difference from the left pane to the right pane (with the Replace Block in Second File from First command or by simply clicking the arrow button on the diff bar in the left pane), the blank line is not copied because it's ignored and thus not part of the diff block. As a result, the right file is missing a space in between two chunks of code after the copy operation, making it a little harder to read in a text editor:

To remedy this problem, I can go to View | Options | File Editing and check the Copy adjacent ignored lines when replacing diff blocks option:

Now when I copy the selected difference from the left pane to the right pane, the blank line underneath is copied as well, just as I wanted:

ExamDiff Pro 5.0 introduced the Email HTML Diff Report command to make it easy to share diff reports. The next version of ExamDiff Pro will facilitate diff report sharing in batch jobs by introducing an /em command-line option to email diff reports.

The command line option is used in the form /em:user@domain.com and sends a diff report (by default, in the Unix diff format) to the specified address. Here's what happens when I enter the following into the command line and hit Enter:

This command-line option prepares an email with the diff report as an attachment and sends the email automatically through the default email MAPI client.

In my case, my default client is Mozilla Thunderbird, but asks me to confirm before the email can be sent, as seen below. Most email clients will behave in the same way. After I hit OK, the email is sent.

Here's what the Unix diff email looks like, and what its attachment consists of:

To send an HTML diff report rather than a Unix diff report, simply add the /html option:

Here's what the HTML diff email looks like, and what its attachment consists of: