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Excel Comparison Pro

Pro feature

This feature requires a Pro licence. Activate your licence to unlock it.

Supported formats

.xlsx (Microsoft Excel Open XML). Password-protected workbooks are not supported.

Opening an Excel comparison

Open a comparison tab and set both sides to .xlsx files. Diffract detects the format and switches to the spreadsheet comparison view.

Reading the grid

The comparison displays both workbooks as aligned grids. Cells that differ between the two versions are highlighted in the standard changed-cell colour. Cells that are identical have no highlight.

The grid shows:

  • Cell values - the displayed value for each cell
  • Formula changes - if a formula changes, the cell is highlighted; hover the cell to see both the formula and its resolved value

Sheet tabs appear at the bottom of the comparison view, one per sheet in the workbook. Click a tab to switch to that sheet on both sides simultaneously. If one workbook has a sheet the other does not, that tab shows an Added badge.

What is compared

  • Cell values and formulas
  • Sheet presence and order
  • The comparison does not currently cover cell formatting (font, fill colour, borders) - only content.

Note

If the two workbooks have different numbers of sheets, each sheet is matched by name. Sheets with no name match are treated as added or removed.