I also accepted all track changes in Document A, then saved Document A under a different name (just so I didn’t mess up the original!).This reduced the file size considerably (a side bonus). To eliminate that as the reason for the error, I saved it as a *.docx document. Document A (the original version) had been created in Word 2003 and so was a *.doc document.After a minute or two of processing, I got the same error that my colleague got.I browsed to the two documents, left all the settings as they were, then clicked OK.To compare two documents, go to the Review tab, Compare group, click the Compare button, then select the Compare… option.
I first tried to compare the two documents without making any changes to them and keeping all the default settings for the comparison.
She asked me for help, and then I discovered the value and the speed of the ‘compare’ function.īut first, I got the same error as her (“Word was unable to compare the documents”) when I tried to compare these documents on my computer, thus eliminating her PC as the problem, but once I’d changed some settings, everything worked superbly. However, a work colleague uses Word’s compare function quite often and was having trouble when comparing two versions of the same document. There are some things I rarely use (such as mail merge), so I’m not familiar with how they work, and then there are other things I just didn’t even realize were in Word - like ‘compare documents’ - because I’ve never had any need to use those features. I’ve been working with Word for a couple of decades (!) now, but still it surprises me with what it can do.