Execution version
The version everything before it was working towards, and the point at which changing a word stops being drafting and starts being a problem.
What it is
The execution version is the final, agreed text of a document, prepared for signature. It is a clean copy with the signature blocks completed, the date left blank or filled as instructed, and nothing outstanding.
"Execution copy" means the same thing. Circulating one is a signal as much as a step: it says the drafting is over, and a comment on it is no longer a drafting point but a reopening.
The final check
The version most worth comparing carefully is this one. By the time a document reaches execution it has been through several hands, and the differences that matter at this stage are usually the ones nobody proposed: a defined term that lost its capital, a cross-reference left pointing at a clause that was renumbered, a schedule that was updated in one copy and not the other.
So the last comparison before signature is against the version everyone believed was agreed, and it is looking for changes nobody meant to make. It is a different exercise from reading a redline mid-negotiation, where you are reading someone's argument. Here you are reading for accidents.
Whole-document comparison is the right tool for that job, and Word's own Compare or a dedicated comparison product will do it properly, with the numbering and the schedules and the parts of a Word file that never survive a paste. Compare the files, not the clauses.
After signature
Once signed, the executed original goes wherever originals go, and what circulates is a conformed copy — the same text with the signatures represented in type, so it can be filed and forwarded without reproducing anybody's handwriting.