How to Compare PDF Files with Three Easy Methods

Moreover, the interface is far more organized and uncluttered compared to Adobe’s product. The real clincher, however, is how user-friendly PDFelement is when matched against any other document management software.

The free trial versions offer full functionality except for the watermark that gets applied to edited and converted documents, which you can easily remove by upgrading to a plan that suits you. Buy PDFelement right now!

Audrey Goodwin. Try It Free. Audrey Goodwin chief Editor. Buy now. Contact a representative. NEW Store and share files online with instant access to recently viewed files. NEW Send, track and confirm delivery of important documents electronically.

NEW Recognize text in scans, and then preview and fix suspected errors with a side-by-side view. The first page summarizes the file comparison results. Legal Notices Online Privacy Policy. Adobe Acrobat User Guide.

Select an article: Select an article:. You can limit the comparison to a portion of the documents by entering the page numbers in the Old File and New File fields. Select Autodetect to let Acrobat decide.

Reports, Spreadsheets, Magazine Layouts : Compares the content as one continuous text body, from end to end. Presentation Decks : Looks at each slide or page as a mini-document, and matches ones that are similar. Then compares the content of each matching document. Identifies documents that have moved, such as slides in a presentation. Scanned Documents, drawing or illustrations: Creates an image capture of each scanned page and compares pixels.

Looks at each scanned page and matches ones that are similar. It also identifies pages that are in a different order. This option is useful for comparing images or architectural drawings. Tip : If your document content can reflow across pages, select Reports, spreadsheets, magazines layouts; otherwise select Presentation Decks. For comparing scanned files, select Scanned documents, drawings or illustrations. With either the reports or presentation options selected, the Compare Text Only option identifies only the text differences between two documents.

With Scanned Documents selected, the text is compared separately from the graphics, and then the results are combined. In documents containing magazine advertisements that have text on top of background image art, a reflowed passage is compared in text-only mode.

The artwork is compared separately in the background. The differences both text and line art and images are combined into a single results document. Show in Report , select the elements of the documents for which you want to see the differences in the compare report.

Note : The text option can be used with any document type. It is designed for comparing text in large documents pages or more. It also compares text between documents that have background artwork on each page, which slows processing.

Compare two versions of a PDF file in Adobe Acrobat

 
With the all-new Compare Files tool, you can now quickly and accurately detect differences between two versions of a PDF file. Choose Tools >. PDF comparison is easy with Adobe Acrobat. The Compare Files tool helps you quickly and accurately detect differences between two versions of a PDF.

How to Compare Two PDF Files

 
With the all-new Compare Files tool, you can now quickly and accurately detect differences between two versions of a PDF file. Choose Tools >. PDF comparison is easy with Adobe Acrobat. The Compare Files tool helps you quickly and accurately detect differences between two versions of a PDF.

Acrobat Reader DC vs. Adobe Acrobat DC –

We’ll also show you a great alternative that makes Adobe’s Compare Document feature look outdated and old-fashioned. It’s called PDFelement and it is the rising star of PDF editors, having won the admiration of users and professional reviewers alike. With that, let’s begin. Adobe Acrobat DC has a built-in feature that allows you to compare two versions of the same PDF document so you can review the differences and take any necessary actions such as editing and so on.

Here’s what to do:. Adobe Acrobat DC allows you to view the changes one at a time, and you can choose the side-by-side view or toggle between the Old File and the New File. You can also filter out certain changes, similar to what you saw on the Settings page. PDFelement is one of the most compelling PDF management solutions on the market today, one of the biggest reasons being that it offers all the functions of Adobe Acrobat at a much lower price point.

In addition, some of the processes are actually faster and more accurate than the market leader. Some of the features include:. Although PDFelement doesn’t offer a built-in feature for comparing two documents, there’s a way to do it quickly and easily. The idea is to have the documents appear together on your screen so you can easily compare them for various differences in text, alignment, images, and other content.

Once both documents are in clear view, you can compare the pages by scrolling the same distance on each of the files in order to align similar content to be visible inside their respective windows. PDFelement is a great alternative to Adobe Acrobat because of its more conservative pricing and its ability to be a robust standalone PDF editor to help you manage your workflows. Moreover, the interface is far more organized and uncluttered compared to Adobe’s product. The real clincher, however, is how user-friendly PDFelement is when matched against any other document management software.

The free trial versions offer full functionality except for the watermark that gets applied to edited and converted documents, which you can easily remove by upgrading to a plan that suits you. Buy PDFelement right now! Audrey Goodwin. Try It Free. Audrey Goodwin chief Editor.