The Diffnow website offers free and online comparison of two files, texts or urls.
Imagine having two large files you want to compare. It can be, for example, member lists from a club from two different years or two versions of a text document. And you want to find the differences easily and quickly and of course free of charge.
If the files are small, it may be quite simple to do manually, but when they are large the task may seem daunting. There are a whole host of file comparison tools in the world of computers that can do the job for you. They are usually called "diff" programs and are truly integrated into Windows and Mac OS. On a Mac all you have to do is open a terminal window and type: diff file-1 file-2 (where file-1 and file-2 are the files you want to compare).
In a Windows computer you need to open a command window and do the same, but replace the diff command with the FC command (which stands for File Compare – Compare the file): fc file-1 file-2
Before you get excited, we have to tell you that the results from these built-in command line tools are not easy to read.
Fortunately, there are many available review tools available on the internet, which are also free and easy to use, and produce results that are much more comprehensible.
One of them is DiffNow which can compare not only Office documents (doc, docx, xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx) but also PDF, HTML, plain text and many other file formats.
Usage is simple. Go to https://www.diffnow.com/ and copy and paste or upload the two files you want to compare. Press it button “Compare” and you will see a screen with two windows, with the contents of each file displayed in each window, and with two-way differences highlighted in color. The results can be obtained if you want.
Η service is free for up to five comparisons per day and for files up to two megabytes. More comparisons and / or larger file sizes can be addressed by subscribing and / or subscribing to their paid service.
This site is something you may need only occasionally, and this is another free service available on the internet without having to buy or install a specialized program to do the job.
