In our daily work, we may encounter the job is to compare two sheets in a same workbook or different workbooks to find the differences between them. Here I introduce some tricks on solving this job in Excel.
Compare two sheets in the same workbook
Compare two sheets in two different workbooks
List all differences between two sheets in the same workbook
Highlight differences between two sheets in the same workbook
Compare and highlight the differences between two sheets
Compare and highlight the differences between two ranges in two sheets
Compare two sheets in the same workbook
In Excel, you can apply the New Window utility to compare two sheets in the same workbook.
1. Enable the workbook you want to compare two sheets within, and then click View > New Window. See screenshot:
2. Then go to the task bar to display the new window of the current workbook. See screenshot:
3. Go to the two sheets you want to compare from each window and arrange them side by side. See screenshot:
4. Now compare two sheets as you need.
Compare two sheets in two different workbooks
If the two sheets you want to compare in two different workbooks, you can apply the View Side by Side utility to handle it.
Open the two sheets you want to compare between, and activate one sheet and click View > View Side by Side. See screenshot:
Then the two sheets in two workbooks have been displayed horizontally.
And then you can compare two sheets as you need.
List all differences between two sheets in the same workbook
If you want to list all differences between two sheets in the same workbook, you can apply a formula to a new sheet to solve it.
1. Open the workbook which contains the sheets you want to compare and create a new sheet. See screenshot:
2. In the new sheet, select a blank cell, for instance, A1, and type this formula =IF(Sheet1!A1<> Sheet7!A1, "Sheet1:"&Sheet1!A1&" vs Sheet7:"&Sheet7!A1, ""), Sheet1 and Sheet7 are the sheets you want to compare with, and A1 is the first cell you want to compare. See screenshot:
3. Then drag the auto fill handle over the range you need to compare between two sheets. See screenshot:
Now the differences between two sheets have been listed.
Highlight differences between two sheets in the same workbook
With the Conditional Formatting utility, you can highlight the differences between two sheets in the same workbook.
1. Select the range in one of both worksheets you want to highlight differences and click Home > Conditional Formatting > New Rule. See screenshot:
2. In the popping out dialog, choose to Use a formula to determine which cells to format in the Select a Rule Type section, and type this formula =A1<>Sheet7!A1 in the Format values where this formula is true box, then click Format to specify formatting style to highlight the cells. See screenshot:
Tip: in the formula, A1 is the first cell in your selection, Sheet7 is the sheet you want to compare with.
3. Click OK > OK, and now the differences have been highlighted.
Compare and highlight the differences between two sheets
If there are two similar worksheets which are in the same structure but have different rows and columns, to compare and highlight the difference between them, you can use Kutools for Excel’s Compare Worksheets feature.
After free installing Kutools for Excel, please do as below:
1. Open the main worksheet you want to use as based sheet, cluck Kutools Plus > Worksheet > Compare Worksheets > Compare Worksheets.
2. In the Compare Worksheets dialog, the current sheet is under Main worksheet section, go to Lookup section, click the browse button to choose the second sheet that you want to use compare with the current sheet. as long as you add the second sheet, the two sheets are placed side by side in the window.
3. Click Next, in this step, specify the settings for highlighting differences. Click Ok to start comparing sheets.
Optional: if you want to reedit the one worksheet based on another worksheet after comparing, click Kutools Plus > Worksheet > Compare Worksheets > Enable Compare Worksheets.
Then after you reediting the data to the same with the same cell in another sheet, the background color marker will disappear.
Attention: this feature compare two worksheets in different workbooks.
Compare and highlight the differences between two ranges in two sheets
Actually, here I can introduce you a handy tool – Kutools for Excel’s Select Same & Different Cells to quickly compare two sheets in a workbook and highlight the differences.
After free installing Kutools for Excel, please do as below:
1. Click Kutools > Select > Select Same & Different Cells. See screenshot:
2. In the popping dialog, click Browse button
3. Click Ok, a dialog pops out to remind you the different cells have been found, and click OK to close it, the differences have been highlighted and selected as well.