Excel compare example: quantity and status
Two spreadsheet rows, which cell values show up, and which spreadsheet features never enter the diff.
Open Excel Compare to run this case yourself.
How version 1 is rendered
[Sheet1]
Product | Quantity | Price | Status
Widget | 10 | 25 | Open
Gadget | 4 | 40 | OpenHow version 2 is rendered
[Sheet1]
Product | Quantity | Price | Status
Widget | 12 | 25 | Open
Gadget | 4 | 40 | ClosedThe problem
Two exports list the same products. Widget’s quantity moved from 10 to 12. Gadget’s status moved from Open to Closed. Price did not change. A reviewer who sorts or filters inside Excel can still miss those two cells if they are not looking at a diff of the values.
What the comparison detects
XLS and XLSX are read sheet by sheet. Each sheet starts with a [Sheet] line. Cells in a row are joined with “ | ”. Empty cells become ∅. Blank rows are skipped. The header row matches, so it stays unmarked. The Widget row and the Gadget row do not match, so each is shown as a changed pair. You can see which field in the pipe-separated line moved. You do not get an Excel cell address such as B2.
CSV uses the same row rendering. Each sheet stops after 1,200 data rows and adds a truncation note. Rows are not reflowed into sentences the way PDF paragraphs are.
What it does not detect
The parser supplies cell values, not formulas, charts, conditional formatting, comments, or column widths. Two files can show the same numbers while one cell contains a formula and the other contains a typed value. That difference will not appear. A change that exists only as a color scale will not appear either.
When this tool may not be the right choice
- Formula auditing. Use Excel’s formula tools when you need precedents, dependents, or a check that a formula was not replaced by a constant.
- Chart comparison, sparklines, or conditional formatting, if those are the change you care about.
- Workbooks larger than the 1,200-row cap per sheet, or files over 10 MB. Split the export or compare it in a spreadsheet with the full file.
Processing and privacy
PDF, Word, and Excel comparison run on the server for the request that submits the form. Each file is read from PHP’s temporary upload path. CompareStack does not copy the upload into a user account, a document database, or application storage. PHP deletes that temporary file at the end of the request when the application has not moved it. The result is the HTML response; there is no saved comparison history. Application logs can still contain the IP address, the requested URL, and—if extraction fails—the exception message. That is not the same as storing the file.
The Privacy Policy and how processing works are the full description.