Compare the same passage from each version

Copy the original and revised text into the text compare tool. On a website, select the main passage rather than navigation, related links and the footer. Use word mode first to review wording, then character mode for punctuation and numbers.

Copy text from a PDF carefully

In a PDF reader that supports selection, select the text and copy it. If a PDF contains scanned images, it may need optical character recognition (OCR) before its words can be selected. Copying may also be disabled by the document author.

In Adobe Acrobat, the OCR workflow is All tools → Scan & OCR → In this file, followed by selecting pages and language and choosing Recognize Text. Review recognized text for mistakes before comparing it. TextCompare does not perform OCR or open PDF files.

Multi-column pages, headers, broken lines and hyphenated words may copy in an unexpected order. Check both pasted versions against the source. Ignore whitespace can reduce spacing noise, but it also hides meaningful spaces and line breaks.

For Word documents, choose the right type of comparison

Copying text is useful for wording alone. To inspect formatting or comments, Word for Windows desktop provides Review → Compare → Compare. Select the original and revised documents and the types of changes to include. Choose to show the result in a New document to preserve both source files, then confirm.

A practical final review

  • Check added and deleted wording in context, especially names, dates, amounts and links.
  • Return to the original documents to check images, formatting, tables, page breaks and missing sections.
  • Check facts and meaning yourself. Similar wording can still change the meaning substantially.
  • Review copied or OCR text for missing characters and reading-order errors.

A text comparison does not validate PDF layout, detect all visual changes or prove that a document is complete. A no-differences result applies only to the text you supplied and the options you selected.

Official references

Adobe: copy PDF content · Adobe: recognize scanned text · Microsoft: compare Word documents