The original document will now be inserted, appended with “_2” on the end of each worksheet name.

…select the original document you have edited (in this case the dodgy translation), then select all the sheets, then click okay.

If using an older version of Excel, you will see and need to click insert worksheets from a file….

Select the first worksheet in your file.

This is to avoid losing your original file.

Save it as a copy, for example with “changes” in the name.

This method’s strength is its (comparative) simplicity. Incidentally, the problem can also be solved using macros – but there you have the added complication of coding said macros and the fact macros are considered a security risk and therefore may be rejected by your client.

This method should also work in OpenOffice and most spreadsheets that use the same sort of formulas. NOTE: You should do this BEFORE changing or correcting the names of any worksheets. The comparison worksheet(s) contain(s) code that will highlight where changes have been made.

The idea is to produce a combined file, where you have the comparison, the original document and your changed document all in the same file. It is called Spreadsheet Compare and is available on SourceForge.ĭetermined not to let my client down, I decided to find or develop a simple and effective solution using the tools provided in Microsoft Excel itself. You can always give this add-on a try since it is equally easy to uninstall again if it does not work or causes problems. Next, I went to Google with my problem and found the following add-on – but, alas, for some reason it did not work for me.

My next thought was – “Well, if Excel has a track changes function, it must have a compare documents function, just like Word does.” But no, for some bizarre reason known only to Microsoft, it does not. If you are using an older version, you may also find this post of particular use. Ah, so it does, from version 2010 at least. My first thought was – “Excel has a track changes function?”. It was when I got to delivery that I noticed I’d overlooked one instruction – “Please turn on track changes so we can update the TM”. The other day I was editing a (might I add, terribly poor) translation for a client in Excel. It’s now been updated, so this post is pretty much obsolete. Please note: The below solution was based on an earlier version of Excel.

Compare workbooks excel for mac