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| Compare Suite 2.1.0.22 | |
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In my quest for the perfect redlining tool, I recently tried Compare Suite from AKS-Labs. My benchmark for comparison always is WorkShare’s DeltaView, the leading redlining tool for Microsoft Word documents. While Compare Suite’s output isn’t as robust as DeltaView’s, Compare Suite allows you to redline Portable Document Format files as well as compare differences between file folders. DeltaView does not have this capability, although a spokeswoman for WorkShare said PDF redlining capabilities will be available in a future release. Compare Suite also has the ability to compare documents by keywords when documents are too disparate to be compared normally. Compare Suite redlines a variety of document formats, including Microsoft Word and Excel, PDF, Web pages and plain text files. It doesn’t work with Corel WordPerfect files. Since Compare Suite compares folders as well as files, it also works with Zip archive files. Document files are first converted to plain text format and then compared. Your original files are not changed; instead, Compare Suite creates temporary files of your original documents. Results are displayed on screen with the original file displayed in the left pane and the revised file in the right pane. You also can open two files and keep the revised file on the left or on the right pane. Compare Suite flags additions, deletions and modifications between the two files using three different colors. You can modify the colors used. Comparison options include character by character, word by word and keywords. Obviously, character by character provides a more precise comparison, but word by word is more readable. Keyword comparisons can be performed on documents with different histories and formatting so you can flag the important differences between the two files. There also are options to ignore case changes, leading spaces, trailing spaces and all spaces. Compare Suite doesn’t include options for line numbering, change numbers or change bars. It also doesn’t flag moved text separately. There are no options for flagging additions, deletions or modifications other than by color. For example, DeltaView allows you to format inserted text as bold, double-underlined and purple if you so desire. You can’t substitute characters, such as a caret, for deleted text. Since files are first converted to plain text formatting, the formatting of headers, footers and tables isn’t retained. However, since auto-paragraph numbers are converted to plain text before redlining, changes in paragraph numbers are displayed. Compare Suite does include a feature not available in DeltaView: The ability to accept or reject changes. This feature is similar to Microsoft Word’s “Track Changes” feature, which allows you to accept or reject individual changes within your Word document. In Compare Suite’s main window, you can right-click a change and select “Apply Change,” “Delete Change” or “Insert Change.” The displayed file is changed accordingly. However, since the original formatting of the redlined file isn’t retained, this feature isn’t useful for accepting or rejecting changes in your original Word files. You also can compare Zip files with Compare Suite. Compare Suite displays the differences between the two file folders in its window panes using three colors: One for added files, one for deleted files and one for modified files. I did have a problem saving some redline reports when trying to create a redline report. This was a major problem. After I compared two lengthy legal documents in Word format, I tried to save the Compare Suite report, but I kept getting “line too long” errors, and the report would not save to disk. Reports are saved in HTML format. There is a problem with long lines because redlined files are first converted to plain text files, without any word wrapping. Since paragraphs in legal documents can be quite lengthy, there are probably some very long lines in the converted plain text files if the lines are not word wrapped. According to AKS-Labs, Compare Suite has a problem with long lines because there is no place to insert breaking line characters. Of course, this makes it very difficult to use Compare Suite in the legal environment. Also, the formatting of reports is limited. Because the reports are in HTML format, they open by default in Microsoft Internet Explorer, which also didn’t word wrap. The paragraphs were just one long line stretching across the screen. The HTML files displayed better in Word where paragraphs were word wrapped. Formatting still is limited to HTML formatting and three colors for flagging additions, deletions and modifications. Compare Suite does create an accurate redline comparison of two documents. However, because the report formatting is so limited, Compare Suite is not well suited for the legal environment. If you are not worried about retaining the original formatting of your documents and want an inexpensive redlining program Compare Suite is adequate enough. |
AKS-Labs Price: Individual licenses are $60. Discounts available for multiple licenses. Windows 9x/ME/2000/XP; 50MB of disk space; Microsoft Office; Internet Explorer 4 or higher. Reviewed by Richard C. Belthoff, Jr., the vice president and assistant general counsel of the Wachovia Corporation in Charlotte, N.C. You can e-mail him at rbelthoff@carolina.rr.com. PROS CONS VERDICT |
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