Selection Diff Tool finds the differences between two plain text selections in Word and selected cells in Excel. It only works with Microsoft Office. It is meant to be an easy-to-use, lightweight text compare utility running inside a Microsoft Office task pane.

It is ideal for finding the differences between two lists in both Microsoft Word and Excel, as illustrated by the screenshots at the bottom of this page.

It cannot act as a replacement for a full-featured Excel spreadsheet compare tool, such as DiffEngineX. For example it can only fetch cell values, not formulae. You can still directly copy and paste in formulae into its two text boxes. Unlike DiffEngineX, it does not compare VBA macros, names or comments.

It works with both single and multiple, contiguous Excel cell selections. However clicking a row/column identifier (1, 2, 3, A, B, C etc) to select a whole row or column does not work. This seems to be an issue in the underlying Microsoft technology. Any other multiple cell selection will work. Copying to the clipboard and then pasting in directly to its two text boxes will always work.

Additions and deletions are highlighted with the colors green and red. Unchanged rows, lines or paragraphs that have been simply moved up or down are highlighted with the colors gray and blue respectively.

Selection Diff Tool is not meant to be a full-featured diff utility, but you can still do a lot with it. For example in Excel, if you copy in just the column or columns that make up the unique identifier for each row, you have a fast way to find what rows have been added and deleted.

Checking Show only changed paragraphs will display all the rows that have been changed, even if the change is only moving the unaltered row up or down.

Checking Changes only, no reordered paragraphs will display all the rows that have been added or deleted. Rows that have been unaltered, but moved up or down are not displayed.

In Word, Selection Diff Tool reports the differences between two plain text selections. It does not compare text formatting. It can be viewed as a clipboard diff tool running inside Microsoft Office. It is useful for when you want to compare two pieces of text that do not exist as separate files.

A free 30-day trial is available from the Microsoft Store.

Selection Diff Tool requires Office 2013 / 2016 / 2019 / 365 to be installed.