How can you know for sure if a file is a text file? Try to open the file in a text editor like Notepad. If you can read all the text fine, it’s a text document. If you see strange characters, it’s a binary file.

If you want to compare Word documents, you do know that Word has it’s own document comparing feature, don’t you? Just open up a Word doc, and go to Tools > Merge and Compare where you point to the second Word doc, and it will do an excellent comparison of the files.

Beyond Compare

it depends on what one’s need is.

as mentioned by bladed thoth, this DOES compare folders.

i’ve always wanted something like this. i teach web design. i carry stuff to school and back on a pen drive. i’ve always struggled with…is this a duplicate folder, do i have this or that? is this ‘the old one or the new one’, all painstaking time. this should speed things up with ease.

this appears to compare folders cleanly and easily. i didn’t have to struggle to figure out how to use the program.

One thing this doesn’t seem to have (at least I can’t find it), is that when you point to a line that different you don’t know what characters are different. In the other programs it shows you which characters are different. What’s the point of telling me that the line is different if it can’t tell me what the difference is? This is a major oversight! Hence, I would consider this program to be a lightweight as compared to others in this category.