How to Compare Two Excel Files

Using Excel's View Side by Side Feature

1. 

   Open the workbooks you need to compare. You can find these by opening Excel, clicking File then Open, and selecting two workbooks to compare from the menu that appears.

   1. Navigate to the folder where you have the Excel workbooks saved, select each workbook separately, and keep both workbooks open.

2. 

   Click the View tab. Once you've opened one of the workbooks, you can click on the View tab in the top-center of the window.

3. 

   Click View Side by Side. This is located in the Window group of the ribbon for the View menu and has two sheets as its icon. This will pull up both worksheets into smaller windows stacked vertically.

   1. This option may not be readily visible under the View tab if you only have one workbook open in Excel.
   2. If there are two workbooks open, then Excel will automatically choose these as the documents to view side by side.

4. 

   Click Arrange All. This setting lets you change the orientation of the workbooks when they're displayed side-by-side.

   1. In the menu that pops up, you can select to have the workbooks Horizontal, Vertical, Cascade, or Tiled.

5. 

   Enable Synchronous Scrolling. Once you have both worksheets open, click on Synchronous Scrolling (located under the View Side by Side option) to make it easier to scroll through both Excel files line-by-line to check for any differences in data manually.

6. 

   Scroll through one workbook to scroll through both. Once Synchronous Scrolling is enabled, you'll be able to easily scroll through both workbooks at the same time and compare their data more easily.