Redlining Word Docs

March 12, 2011 7:00 AM

Redlining microsoft word documents?

Hi all,

I'm looking for the ability to redline and compare Microsoft Word documents, in a manner similar to workspace.com's Deltaview - but... free/opensource please! I don't want to pay the $99 annual fee for Deltaview.

Any recommendations as to the best free, stable, secure software?

posted by slateyness to Technology (7 answers total)

You know Word itself has that kind of feature built in, yes? OpenOffice.org Writer can also do something similar.
posted by flabdablet at 7:21 AM on March 12, 2011

For future commenters, "redlining" apparently means a diff.
posted by d. z. wang at 7:30 AM on March 12, 2011

Here are three different ways to do it. If you do a google search for "diff two word documents" you'll find many more.
posted by kthxbi at 8:06 AM on March 12, 2011

you really want to get comfortable doing this with MS Word's own legal blackline feature.

It is really good ... in many ways better than delatview, and widely available and accepted.

J
posted by jannw at 10:57 AM on March 12, 2011

Textflow @ http://www.nordicriver.com/
posted by iNfo.Pump at 11:22 AM on March 12, 2011

Ooh, thanks for this question. I use DeltaView at work but also didn't want to buy it. Came in to say that in OpenOffice the option is under Edit, Compare. I don't use Word at home, but can someone in the know post how it's done in Word?
posted by lvanshima at 12:01 PM on March 12, 2011

Yes, absolutely just use Word's built in feature. It's part of the "review" toolbar. You can compare or combine and it shows the changes using track changes. Easy!
posted by misanthropicsarah at 2:29 PM on March 12, 2011