Compare Workbooks and Highlight Differences

[Chris Waller]

Hi All,

I am using Excel 2016 and I am experiencing a problem with what I thought was a straightforward task and I need a little help.

I receive a workbook (containing 5 worksheets) on a daily basis and I have to lift the changes and populate another system with the updates. The problem is, as time goes by the list is slowly increasing and now it takes a considerable amount of time to go through the changes and I am conscious that I may miss some, so I was wanting a better way to do this, either by automating it with a macro or using conditional formatting to highlight the changes.

I don't mind if the answer is to use a macro or whether conditional formatting will do the job, whichever is easiest.

There are a lot of posts on the Internet about comparing worksheets within the same workbook, but I cannot find much about comparing workbooks and highlighting the differences.

TIA

 

[Trevor G]

Have you considered using the Inquire Tab this will compare 2 workbooks for you. You have to make the Inquire Tab visible to use it.

 

[Chris Waller]

Trevor,

Thanks for you response. I have tried using the Inquire Tab and unfortunately it doesn't appear to work. It's probably a bit of functionality that my employer would have thought was useful, so they have probably disabled it. This is just one of the reasons that I asked if this can be done by using a conditional formatting or using a macro.,