Compare Word Documents in C++

Microsoft Word remains one of the most popular and widely used applications when it comes to creating and processing documents. When working with Word documents, there often arises a need to compare two or more documents to identify differences, revisions, or updates. To perform this task programmatically, you need a powerful solution that gives you accurate comparison results. So let’s explore how to compare two Word documents in a C++ application.

C++ Library to Compare Word Documents

Aspose.Words for C++ is a feature-rich library that allows developers to create, modify, and manipulate Word documents in various ways. To get started, you’ll need to have the library installed and a C++ development environment set up. You can obtain Aspose.Words for C++ from the official website and follow the installation instructions provided in the documentation.

Compare Word Documents in C++

Aspose.Words for C++ simplifies the comparison process of Word documents. Simply load the documents to be compared, call Document->Compare method, and get the differences between the documents. Here are the steps you need to perform:

Document->Compare method mimics Microsoft Word’s compare feature and produces document differences as the number of edits and format revisions. The main idea is that if we reject all revisions then we get a document that is equal to the original document. On the contrary, if we accept all revisions then we get the final (comparison target) document.

The following code snippet shows how to compare two Word documents in C++.

Advanced Document Comparison Options

You can use some advanced features to customize document comparisons. The CompareOptions class offers various properties for this purpose.

For instance, within Aspose.Words, you can ignore changes made for specific types of objects in the document. You can achieve this by toggling relevant properties, like IgnoreHeadersAndFooters, IgnoreFormatting, IgnoreComments, among others, to “true.”

Additionally, you can use the Granularity property, which enables you to specify whether changes should be tracked on a character or word level. Furthermore, you can decide which version of the document should display the comparison changes. Much like the “Compare documents dialogue box” in Microsoft Word, you can influence the comparison results with Aspose.Words by using the Target property.

The following code snippet demonstrates how to use different options to customize Word document comparison in a C++ application.

Get a Free License

You can get a free temporary license and use the C++ word processing library without evaluation limitations.

The resources, you may need to accomplish your tasks:

Conclusion

Comparing Word documents in C++ is a common requirement for many document-processing applications. Aspose.Words for C++ simplifies this task by providing a powerful library that allows you to programmatically compare documents, track changes, and generate comparison documents. This is especially valuable for businesses and developers who need to manage document revisions and collaborate on content.

In this blog post, we’ve explored the process of comparing Word documents using C++. By following the steps outlined above, you can easily integrate this functionality into your C++ applications and streamline the document comparison process with advanced features. You may ask your questions or post your queries about the library on our forum.

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