Compare Documents

Namespace: Clippit

Compare two Word documents and produce a result document with tracked revisions showing the differences. Consolidate multiple revised documents against an original, or extract a list of revisions from a comparison result.

public static class WmlComparer {
    public static WmlDocument Compare(
        WmlDocument source1, WmlDocument source2, WmlComparerSettings settings)
    {...}

    public static WmlDocument Consolidate(
        WmlDocument original,
        List<WmlRevisedDocumentInfo> revisedDocumentInfoList,
        WmlComparerSettings settings)
    {...}

    public static List<WmlComparerRevision> GetRevisions(
        WmlDocument source, WmlComparerSettings settings)
    {...}
}

Compare

Compares two Word documents and returns a new document containing tracked revisions (insertions and deletions) that represent the differences between source1 and source2. The comparison operates at the word level by default, using WordSeparators from WmlComparerSettings to split text into tokens.

Consolidate

Merges multiple revised versions of a document against a common original. Each revised document is provided with a revisor name and color via WmlRevisedDocumentInfo. The result contains tracked revisions from all revisors. By default, revisions are wrapped in a comparison table (controlled by WmlComparerConsolidateSettings.ConsolidateWithTable).

GetRevisions

Extracts a flat list of WmlComparerRevision objects from a document that contains tracked revisions (typically the output of Compare or Consolidate). Each revision includes the revision type (Inserted or Deleted), text content, author, and date.

WmlComparerSettings

Property	Type	Default
WordSeparators	char[]	[' ', '-', ')', '(', ';', ',']
AuthorForRevisions	string	"Open-Xml-PowerTools"
DateTimeForRevisions	string	DateTime.Now.ToString("o")
DetailThreshold	double	0.15
CaseInsensitive	bool	false
CultureInfo	CultureInfo	null
LogCallback	Action<string>	null
StartingIdForFootnotesEndnotes	int	1
DebugTempFileDi	DirectoryInfo	null

Compare Sample

var source1 = new WmlDocument("Original.docx");
var source2 = new WmlDocument("Revised.docx");

var settings = new WmlComparerSettings
{
    AuthorForRevisions = "Comparison Tool",
    DetailThreshold = 0.15
};

var comparedDoc = WmlComparer.Compare(source1, source2, settings);
comparedDoc.SaveAs("Comparison.docx");

Consolidate Sample

var original = new WmlDocument("Original.docx");

var revisedDocs = new List<WmlRevisedDocumentInfo>
{
    new()
    {
        RevisedDocument = new WmlDocument("Revised_Alice.docx"),
        Revisor = "Alice",
        Color = Color.LightBlue
    },
    new()
    {
        RevisedDocument = new WmlDocument("Revised_Bob.docx"),
        Revisor = "Bob",
        Color = Color.LightGreen
    }
};

var settings = new WmlComparerSettings();

var consolidated = WmlComparer.Consolidate(original, revisedDocs, settings);
consolidated.SaveAs("Consolidated.docx");

GetRevisions Sample

var comparedDoc = WmlComparer.Compare(source1, source2, settings);

var revisions = WmlComparer.GetRevisions(comparedDoc, settings);
foreach (var rev in revisions)
{
    Console.WriteLine($"{rev.RevisionType}: \"{rev.Text}\" by {rev.Author} on {rev.Date}");
}