How to compare two worksheets in same workbook or different workbooks?

In our daily work, we may encounter tasks requiring us to compare two sheets in the same workbook or in different workbooks to find the differences between them. Here I introduce some tricks on solving this job in Excel.

Compare two worksheets in the same workbook

Compare two worksheets in two different workbooks

List all differences between two worksheets in the same workbook

Highlight differences between two worksheets in the same workbook

Compare and highlight the differences between two worksheets

Compare and highlight the differences between two ranges in two worksheets

Compare two worksheets in the same workbook

In Excel, you can apply the New Window utility to compare two sheets in the same workbook.

1. Enable the workbook you want to compare two sheets within, and then click "View" > "New Window". See screenshot:

2. Next, go to the taskbar to display the new window of the current workbook. See screenshot:

3. Switch to the two sheets you want to compare in each window and arrange them side by side. See screenshot:

4. Now compare two sheets as you need.

Compare two worksheets in two different workbooks

If the two sheets you want to compare in two different workbooks, you can apply the "View Side by Side" utility to handle it.

Open the two workbooks containing the sheets you want to compare, activate one sheet, and then click "View" > "View Side by Side". See screenshot:

Then the two sheets in two workbooks have been displayed horizontally.

And then you can compare two sheets as you need.

List all differences between two worksheets in the same workbook

If you want to list all differences between two sheets in the same workbook, you can apply a formula to a new sheet to solve it.

1. Open the workbook which contains the sheets you want to compare and create a new sheet. See screenshot:

2. In the new sheet, select a blank cell, for instance, A1, and type this formula:

=IF(Sheet1!A1<> Sheet7!A1, "Sheet1:"&Sheet1!A1&" vs Sheet7:"&Sheet7!A1, "")

3. Then drag the auto fill handle over the range you need to compare between two sheets. See screenshot:

The differences between the two sheets are now listed.

Highlight differences between two worksheets in the same workbook

With the Conditional Formatting utility, you can highlight the differences between two sheets in the same workbook.

1. Select the range in one of both worksheets you want to highlight differences and click "Home" > "Conditional Formatting" > "New Rule". See screenshot:

2. In the popping out dialog, choose to" Use a formula to determine which cells to format" in the "Select a Rule Type" section, and type the following formula in the "Format values where this formula is true" box, then click "Format" to specify formatting style to highlight the cells.

=A1<>Sheet7!A1

Tip: in the formula, A1 is the first cell in your selection, Sheet7 is the sheet you want to compare with.

3. Click "OK" > "OK", and now the differences have been highlighted.

Compare and highlight the differences between two worksheets

If there are two similar worksheets which are in the same structure but have different rows and columns, to compare and highlight the differences between them, you can use the "Compare Worksheets" feature of Kutools for Excel.

1. Open the main worksheet you want to use as based sheet, cluck "Kutools Plus" > "Worksheet" > "Compare Worksheets" > "Compare Worksheets".

2. In the "Compare Worksheets" dialog, the current sheet is under "Main worksheet" section, go to "Lookup" section, click the "browse" button to choose the second sheet that you want to use compare with the current sheet. Once you add the second sheet, the two sheets are displayed side by side in the window.

3. Click "Next", in this step, specify the settings for highlighting differences. Click "Ok" to start comparing sheets.

Optional: if you want to reedit the one worksheet based on another worksheet after comparing, click "Kutools Plus" > "Worksheet" > "Compare Worksheets" > "Enable Compare Worksheets".

Then after you reediting the data to the same with the same cell in another sheet, the background color marker will disappear.

Attention: this feature compare two worksheets in different workbooks.

Compare and highlight the differences between two ranges in two worksheets

Here, I would like to introduce a handy tool – "Kutools for Excel"’s "Select Same & Different Cells" feature - that allows you to quickly compare two sheets in a workbook and highlight the differences.

1. Click "Kutools" > "Select" > "Select Same & Different Cells". See screenshot:

2. In the popping dialog, click the "Browse" button in the "Find values in" and "According to" box to select the two ranges you want to compare with, and check" Single cell" and "Different values" options, and specify the background and font colors to highlight the differences. See screenshot:

3. Click "Ok", a dialog pops out to remind you the different cells have been found, and click "OK" to close it, the differences have been highlighted and selected as well.

Demo: Compare Two Ranges in Two Worksheets Using Kutools For Excel