used to compare excel files

[Guest]

The current BC on my current machine is not comparing excel files. I downloaded the plug ins and tried to assign *.xls files to the file viewer. How can I do the comparison again?

[Chris]

Re: used to compare excel files

To compare Excel files in the File Viewer.
Download the MS Excel Rule from: http://www.scootersoftware.com/rules/MSExcel.zip

Unzip the file to c:\program files\beyond compare 2\

This should give you the following new files:
C:\Program Files\Beyond Compare 2\MSExcel\MSExcel.xml
C:\Program Files\Beyond Compare 2\MSExcel\MSExcel_ReadMe.txt
C:\Program Files\Beyond Compare 2\MSExcel\xls2csv.vbs

In Beyond Compare, select Tools|Import Settings.
Select the above MSExcel.xml rule and import it.

When you open .XLS files in the File Viewer, their text contents should display.

Note the MS Excel rule requires Microsoft Excel to be installed on your system to function.

If the above instructions don't work, do you get any error messages when opening Excel files in BC?

[Guest]

Re: used to compare excel files

This seemed to do the trick. Thank you.

Why are the excel rules hidden from the BC pages? There is a "more rules" link to two more obscure file types. It seems that excel files will be far more common for now.

And how about *.doc (Word files) again? Can I get that link?

If one uses "open office", will those file types be readable in BC?

Regards

[Chris]

Re: used to compare excel files

The Excel rules, MS Word rules, and others are all listed on our Additional File Viewer Rules page at:

http://www.scootersoftware.com/downl...c=kb_morerules

We don't have anything built in for comparison of Open Office files, so you'll need to save the files as plain text to compare them in BC.

It is possible to look inside the contents of Open Office files using BC. Open Office file formats are archive files. If you add their file extensions (example *.odt) to the Archive Associations in the General section of Beyond Compare's Tools|Options dialog, you can expand them for comparison in the File Viewer.

[Clay.Nichols]

Thanks! That's an incredibly useful feature.