Compare Two Google Documents - Great for Grading or Seeing Differences!

Have you ever faced a situation where two Google documents exist that are similar, and you want to quickly figure out the differences? Last week's blog post covered how you can use Version History to compare a single document's changes over time - and even restore a previous version if you had an 'oops'!

This week we explore the newly introduced option to compare two separate documents.

If you are a teacher who has students submit one document as a 'rough draft,' and students submit an entirely different document as their 'final draft,' you should love how easy it is to see what suggestions students incorporated into the last version.

Comparing Two Google Documents:

To analyze the differences between the two documents, open the first document. From the toolbar, select Tools > Compare Documents.

In the dialogue, click on Choose document to select the second Google Doc to compare against.
In the “Attribute differences to field,” enter the name of the user who will be labeled as the author of the suggested edits in the comparison output file.
Select Compare.

Google will notify you when the document highlighting changes and comments has been created for your review!

Graphics courtesy of the GSuite Updates blog.

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