Comparing Two Worksheets in Excel

A user came to me today needing to quickly compare two Excel worksheets which were supposed to be the same but were not. Because she needed a very quick answer, I did a quick Google search and found a nice macro which grabbed Sheet1, compared it to Sheet2, and then created a new workbook. In the new workbook, any changed cell had both the original text and the changed text. Now, I like to give credit where credit is due. I found the original code for the macro here.

The problem was that the new workbook contained over 5000 changed cells. Some of the cells had a text paragraph in them originally, so the new workbook contained cells with huge amounts of text separated by "<>". It was a visual nightmare, as the user had a hard time quickly telling where the original stopped and the changed started. I requested some help, and nutsch from Experts-Exchange came to my rescue. He came up with a quick macro which changed the color of the text after the separator mark (<>) to red.

Sub ChangeColor()
Dim cl As range

On Error Resume
Next

For Each cl In ActiveSheet.UsedRange.Cells

If Len(Trim$(cl)) > 0 Then
If InStr(cl, "<>") > 0 Then _
cl.Characters(Start:=InStr(cl, "<>") + 2, Length:=Len(cl)).Font.ColorIndex = 3
End If
Next

End Sub

Here is the question on Experts-Exchange which resulted in this code:

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Software/Office_Productivity/Office_Suites/MS_Office/Excel/Q_25155367.html

After presenting this solution to the user, she again wanted something more. This time, she said it would be better to just highlight the changes in Sheet2 in the original Workbook rather than concatenating the two respective cells when a change existed. I once again turned to the Experts, and nutsch once again came to my rescue. This code simply changes the text color in Sheet2 to red if it is different than the text in Sheet1.

Sub TrackDifferences()
Dim rng As range, cl As range, sht2 As
Worksheet, sht1 As Worksheet

Set sht2 = Sheets("Sheet2")
Set sht1 = Sheets("Sheet1")

Set rng = sht1.UsedRange 'set variable rng to the range selected

application.ScreenUpdating = False

For Each cl In rng.Cells 'loop through all cells of the selected range
If sht2.Cells(cl.Row, cl.Column) <> cl Then _
sht2.Cells(cl.Row, cl.Column).Font.ColorIndex = 3
Next

application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub

Here is the Question on Experts-Exchange which resulted in this code:

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Software/Office_Productivity/Office_Suites/MS_Office/Excel/Q_25155502.html

In the end, the user had two different options: Option 1 was a new Workbook which had both old and new, and Option 2 just highlighted the changes directly in Sheet2. I hope that someone can benefit from this comparison utility.

Justin