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Beyond Compare

Startup options

When Beyond Compare starts up, it normally shows the Home view.  To have the program automatically start up with the same sessions that were open the last time you used Beyond Compare, specify the same workspace name in the Load workspace and On Exit, save workspace as edits.  In the Session menu, you can also use the Save Workspace As and Load Workspace commands for further control.

When you start Beyond Compare with a pair of files specified, the program can display a dialog with a comparison summary, rather than taking the time to display the entire side-by-side comparison.  To preface a file comparison with the Quick Compare dialog:

1.Choose Tools | Options (Beyond Compare | Settings on macOS) to open the Options dialog.

2.Click the Startup page.

Item

Description

Load workspace

Choose a workspace from the drop-down menu to automatically open it when Beyond Compare starts.

On exit, save workspace as

Choose a workspace from the drop-down menu to automatically save it when Beyond Compare exits.

When starting with file comparison, show quick compare dialog

Select the checkbox to show the quick compare dialog when starting a file comparison.

•Select the Binary quick compare radio button to perform a byte-by-byte comparison.

•Select the Rules-based quick compare radio button to use the file format settings appropriate for the specified files.

•Select the Open view automatically if files are different checkbox if you want the dialog to only appear when the files match.

Run Clipboard Compare on Windows startup

Select the checkbox to enable Clipboard Compare, is a small system tray application that can be used to compare recent Windows clipboard entries.

Include Beyond Compare in Explorer context menu

Select the checkbox to include Beyond Compare commands in the Windows Explorer context menu.

•Choose any of the optional commands listed in the table and choose Main menu or Submenu to include it in the context menu.  
 
Enable Compare Using to add a submenu that lists specific views, such as the Table Compare view and the Hex Compare view.  This allows you to override the view that would normally be selected via the file formats list.  

•Enable Merge to add 3-way merge support to the context menu.  

•Enable Sync to support synchronizing folders from Explorer.  

•Enable Edit to support editing a single file from Explorer.  

•Enable Compare to Registry to support comparing a registry file to the live registry.