Compare Word Documents Using the Syncfusion .NET Word Library

The Syncfusion^® .NET Word Library enables powerful comparison capabilities, allowing you to identify differences between two versions of a Word document as tracked changes-without relying on Microsoft Word or interop dependencies.

Watch this video to learn how to compare a Word documents using the Syncfusion .NET Word Library.

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Compare Word documents using C#

Learn how to compare Word documents programmatically using C# with the Syncfusion .NET Word Library. This guide demonstrates how to identify differences between two document versions as tracked changes.

Step 1: Create a new project

Start by creating a new C# Console Application project.

Step 2: Install the NuGet package

Add the Syncfusion.DocIO.Net.Core package to your project from NuGet.org.

Step 3: Add required namespaces to compare Word documents

Add the following namespaces to your Program.cs file:

c#
using Syncfusion.DocIO;
using Syncfusion.DocIO.DLS;

Step 4: Open the original document

Open the original Word document from a file stream.

c#
FileStream originalDocumentStreamPath = new FileStream(Path.GetFullPath(@"Data/OriginalDocument.docx"), FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read);
WordDocument originalDocument = new WordDocument(originalDocumentStreamPath, FormatType.Docx);

Step 5: Open the revised document

Open the revised Word document that will be compared with the original.

c#
//Loads the revised document
FileStream revisedDocumentStreamPath = new FileStream(Path.GetFullPath(@"Data/RevisedDocument.docx"), FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read);
WordDocument revisedDocument = new WordDocument(revisedDocumentStreamPath, FormatType.Docx);

Step 6: Compare the documents

Compare the original document with the revised document to identify differences as tracked changes.

Run

c#
// Compare the original and revised Word documents
originalDocument.Compare(revisedDocument);

Step 7: Save the Word document

Save the compared document with tracked changes to a file stream.

c#
//Save the Word document
FileStream fileStreamOutput = File.Create(Path.GetFullPath("Output/Result.docx"));
originalDocument.Save(fileStreamOutput, FormatType.Docx);
originalDocument.Close();
revisedDocument.Close();
originalDocumentStreamPath.Close();
revisedDocumentStreamPath.Close();