How to compare text in Excel
Excel compares cells well and paragraphs badly. The formulas below cover the first case; for the second, paste both columns into the panes and see exactly which words changed.
Text comparison tool
Paste text into both panes, then press Compare.
Compare two cells exactly
The function you want is EXACT. In a third column, enter:
=EXACT(A2,B2)— returns TRUE only if the cells match exactly, including capitalisation.=A2=B2— the same idea but case-insensitive, so "Invoice" and "invoice" both return TRUE.-
=IF(EXACT(A2,B2),"","Changed")— leaves matching rows blank so the differences are the only thing you see.
Fill the formula down the column. This is the fastest approach when you are comparing two lists of short values — SKUs, names, reference numbers — and you only need to know whether a row changed.
Highlight the differences visually
Formulas give you a column of TRUE and FALSE, which is not much to look at. To colour
the changed rows instead, select both columns, then choose
Home → Conditional Formatting → New Rule → Use a formula to determine which
cells to format and enter =$A2<>$B2. Pick a fill colour and
apply. Changed rows now stand out without an extra column.
The dollar signs matter: they lock the comparison to columns A and B while letting the row number move as the rule is applied down the sheet. Leave them out and the highlighting will drift.
Where Excel stops being useful
Every method above answers one question — is this cell the same as that cell? It
cannot tell you what changed inside the cell. If A2 holds a two-hundred-word
clause and B2 holds a revised version of it, EXACT returns FALSE and
stops there. You still have to read both paragraphs to find the edit.
This is the common case in practice: contract text, product descriptions, address fields, translated strings, anything where a cell holds a sentence rather than a code. Excel has no word-level comparison, and no add-in changes that fundamentally.
Comparing spreadsheet text properly
- Select the first column in Excel and copy it.
- Paste it into the left pane above.
- Copy the second column and paste it into the right pane.
- Keep granularity on word — already selected on this page — and press Compare.
Each row lines up as a line, so row 14 on the left sits opposite row 14 on the right. Rows that match are shown plainly; rows that changed highlight only the words that differ. A single altered figure inside a long clause is visible immediately instead of being reported as a whole changed cell.
If your data is already exported, comparing the files directly is often easier still — see comparing CSV exports, where each row maps naturally to a line.
Is it safe to paste spreadsheet data here?
Spreadsheets are exactly the kind of file that should not be uploaded casually — they tend to hold customer lists, salaries, pricing and internal identifiers. This tool does the comparison in your own browser: there is no API endpoint, no upload and no server-side processing, and analytics records only that a comparison ran and roughly how large it was, never the content.
You can verify it in a few seconds. Open developer tools, switch to the Network tab and press Compare — no request carrying your data will appear.
Excel comparison questions
Is my text uploaded to a server?
No. The entire comparison runs in your browser using JavaScript. Your text is never transmitted, logged or stored anywhere. You can verify this yourself: open your browser developer tools, switch to the Network tab, and run a comparison — no request carrying your text will appear. The only network activity is the page itself and, if enabled, analytics and advertising scripts, none of which receive what you typed.
What is the difference between character, word and line comparison?
Line comparison treats each line as a single unit — useful for code and structured data where a whole line changes at once. Word comparison highlights individual words that changed within a line, which suits prose. Character comparison is the most granular and pinpoints single-character edits, useful for spotting typos or subtle changes in identifiers.
How do I compare text in Excel?
For a cell-by-cell check, put =EXACT(A2,B2) in a third column — it returns TRUE only when the two cells match exactly, including capitalisation. Using =A2=B2 instead ignores case. To highlight the differences visually, select both columns and use Home, Conditional Formatting, New Rule, then a formula rule such as =$A2<>$B2. Those work well for short values, but they compare cell against cell and cannot show you what changed inside a longer paragraph. For that, copy the two blocks of text into the panes above and use word or character granularity — you will see the specific words that differ rather than just a TRUE or FALSE.
How do I compare CSV files?
Upload both CSV files and use line comparison, which aligns naturally with CSV rows. Each changed row is highlighted, and switching to word or character granularity shows precisely which fields within a row differ. Large exports work fine — the comparison is limited only by your browser, not by a server quota.