How Do Compare Files In Notepad++ Text?

• Notepad++ - Introduction
• Notepad++ - Add to Every Line
• Notepad++ - Compare
• Notepad++ - Hidden Chars
• Notepad++ - Python Indent
• Notepad++ - Remove Line
• Notepad++ - Themes
• Notepad++ - Duplicate lines
• Notepad++ - Empty lines
• Notepad++ - Encoding
• Notepad++ - File Tree View
• Notepad++ - Find and Replace
• Notepad++ - Open
• notepad++ - Tab to spaces
• notepad++ - unsaved files
• Notepad++ - Upper & Lower
• Notepad++ - Word Wrap

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• How to Compare text content files in a Notepad++ text editor?

1. Home
2. IDE - tutorials
3. Notepad++ - Introduction
4. Notepad++ - Compare

Notepad++ - Compare

How do compare and differentiate file text content in Notepad++ Text editor using plugins or packages and natively?.

Like any editor, Notepad provides support for the comparison of files using the compare plugin. Compare plugin compares the files with

• Compare text content
• Difference between two code files
• Compare two versions of the same file

It also shows differences between the below things highlighted colors.

• Line added
• line removed
• line modified This tutorial works on the latest version 8.1 or more.

How to Compare text content files in a Notepad++ text editor?

Here are the steps to compare the files in the Notepad text editor.

• Open notepad++ text editor( Version 8.x or more)

• Select Menu Plugins > Plugins Admin menu item

• It opens the Plugins Admin window and type compare in the Search box.

• It shows below the window and selects Compare plugin as given below

  

• And, the Select install button installs the plugin.

• Open the files that you want to compare in two separate tabs in Notepad++

• Next, Select Plugins Menu> Compare > Compare Option(Ctrl + Alt +C)

  

• Two Files are shown and split between the editor in the side-by-side view.

• You will see conflicting lines highlighted as seen below

• Also, You can see arrow icons in blue colors to navigate next and previous differences

• You can close the split windows and close compare features using Select Plugins Menu> Compare > Clear All Compare Option(Ctrl + Alt + Shift +X)

Also, the Compare plugin has a few options as shown above.

• Set As First to Compare - Shortcut Ctrl + Alt + 1

  It sets the foreground file as the first file and the background file as the second file and compares both these files

• Compare - Shortcut Ctrl + Alt +C

Compare two files and show the differences in highlighted color. These options compare a file that opened this option with another file.

• Clear Active Compare (Ctrl + Alt +X)
• Clear All Compare` Option(Ctrl + Alt + Shift +X)

Both are used to close Active and all compare windows.

• Svn Diff (Ctrl + Alt +V) Compare the selected file’s local version with the remote version of a file in the svn repository.

• Git Diff (Ctrl + Alt +G) Compare file version with remote git repository

• Ignore Spaces are ignored, default is unchecked

• Navigation Bar: Show navigation bar helps with blue icons to go to file location instead of scroll

• Detect Moves: icon show or hide for line add or remove

Also you have different configurations to Compare plugin settings

Go to Plugins - Compare - Settings, Settings window shown.

We can configure different styles like

• color for line added, removed, conflict
• First file as old file position

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