Redline Pad and Word Compare
Word Compare works on files and sees everything in them. This works on text you paste and sees only that. They are for different jobs, and most days you want Word's.
These are not competing products. Word Compare is a feature of a word processor that works on files; Redline Pad is a page that compares text you paste into it. The useful question is which of the two jobs you have in front of you.
What Word Compare does
Word compares two .docx files and produces a third document containing the differences as tracked changes. Because it works on the files rather than on their text, it sees everything they contain: automatic numbering, styles, tables, headers and footers, footnotes, and formatting that has no visible representation until it goes wrong.
The output is a Word document. You can accept and reject revisions in it, save it, send it, and the person receiving it needs nothing they do not already have. For a whole agreement — particularly one heading for signature — that is exactly right, and nothing that works on pasted text is a substitute for it.
It is included with Word, it runs offline, and your document never leaves your machine. Those are real advantages and they are worth stating plainly on a page like this one.The guide to using it covers the steps and the options.
What this does
Redline Pad compares two pieces of text you paste. There is no file, no save step and no application to open: you paste, and the redline appears. Formatting survives the paste from Word, Outlook or Gmail, so bold and italic and lists are compared rather than flattened.
Its limits follow directly from that. It knows only the text you gave it, so it cannot tell you that a clause was renumbered, that a definition changed two pages earlier, or that a schedule moved. It produces no file. It has no concept of the rest of the document, because it was never shown the rest of the document.
Side by side
| Word Compare | Redline Pad | |
|---|---|---|
| Works on | Two Word files | Two pieces of text you paste |
| Sees | Everything in the files — numbering, styles, tables, headers, footnotes | Only the text and inline formatting you pasted |
| Produces | A Word document with tracked changes | A redline on screen, and four ways to copy it |
| Setup | Both versions saved as files; desktop Word | None — open the page and paste |
| Where the text goes | Nowhere; it stays on your machine | Nowhere; it stays in your browser |
| Availability | Desktop Word only, not the web or mobile apps | Any modern browser |
| Cost | Included with Word | Free |
Which to use
Use Word Compare when you have two files, when the document is long, when numbering or formatting matters, when the comparison has to be handed to someone else as a document, or when you are checking an execution version before signature. That is most of the serious comparison work in a transactional practice.
Use this when what you have is a clause in an email and the question is what changed in it — where saving two files in order to run a document comparison is more work than the answer is worth. It takes about ten seconds, and it is free.
Plenty of days involve both: the clause in the thread now, the document comparison when the full draft arrives.