From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11


I'm currently going through estate planning, and my attorney's office
gives me a new 80+ page document after each round of updates. You'd
think they'd give me a redline version, but no. I don't trust myself
to compare the versions on screen, and reading each draft of the
whole document is really time consuming, plus there's still the
possibility of missing something.

Is there any free software that runs in Windows and will show
differences between two PDFs? Because these are sensitive documents,
I don't want to upload them to a website. I tried googling, but
couldn't find anything that would do the job without costing an arm
and a leg.

Thanks in advance!
--
"The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by
those who don't have it." --George Bernard Shaw
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On 7/9/26 10:03 AM, Stan Brown wrote:

I'm currently going through estate planning, and my attorney's office
gives me a new 80+ page document after each round of updates. You'd
think they'd give me a redline version, but no. I don't trust myself
to compare the versions on screen, and reading each draft of the
whole document is really time consuming, plus there's still the
possibility of missing something.

Is there any free software that runs in Windows and will show
differences between two PDFs? Because these are sensitive documents,
I don't want to upload them to a website. I tried googling, but
couldn't find anything that would do the job without costing an arm
and a leg.

Thanks in advance!

Copilot returns:

1. KIWI PDF Comparer — Free, Windows-focused

KIWI PDF Comparer is a dedicated tool built specifically for visual PDF comparison. It
highlights differences in text, images, and annotations, and supports synchronized
side‑by‑side viewing. It’s free and works well for up to ~100 pages.
2. Adobe Acrobat Pro DC — Most powerful & accurate

Acrobat’s Compare Files tool is extremely robust. It detects changes in text, formatting,
images, backgrounds, and even scanned pages. It produces a detailed report and side‑by‑side view. This is the most accurate option, but requires a subscription.
3. Soda PDF — Easy interface, strong comparison

Soda PDF includes a Compare Documents feature that highlights all changes between two
versions. It’s simpler than Acrobat but still very capable.
4. Draftable — Free online or desktop

Draftable is great for quick comparisons. It highlights differences clearly and works in a
browser or via a desktop app.
5. WinMerge — General diff tool with image comparison

WinMerge can compare images and text files. For PDFs, you typically export pages as images
or text first, but its image diff mode can highlight visual differences. Useful if you
prefer open‑source tools.
--
Mint 22.3, Thunderbird 140.12.0esr, Firefox 152.0.4
Alan K.
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From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On Thu, 09 Jul 2026 09:03:31 -0500, Stan Brown <someone@example.com> wrote:

I'm currently going through estate planning, and my attorney's office
gives me a new 80+ page document after each round of updates. You'd
think they'd give me a redline version, but no. I don't trust myself
to compare the versions on screen, and reading each draft of the
whole document is really time consuming, plus there's still the
possibility of missing something.

Is there any free software that runs in Windows and will show
differences between two PDFs? Because these are sensitive documents,
I don't want to upload them to a website. I tried googling, but
couldn't find anything that would do the job without costing an arm
and a leg.

Thanks in advance!

B. R. 'BeAr' Ederson posted on alt.comp.freeware in 2023 about DiffPDF.

The Last Freeware Version can be found at https://web.archive.org/web/20130805135953/http://qtrac.eu/diffpdf.html

I also uploaded it to
https://archive.org/details/diff-pdf-2.1.3
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On 7/9/2026 10:03 AM, Stan Brown wrote:

I'm currently going through estate planning, and my attorney's office
gives me a new 80+ page document after each round of updates. You'd
think they'd give me a redline version, but no. I don't trust myself
to compare the versions on screen, and reading each draft of the
whole document is really time consuming, plus there's still the
possibility of missing something.

Is there any free software that runs in Windows and will show
differences between two PDFs? Because these are sensitive documents,
I don't want to upload them to a website. I tried googling, but
couldn't find anything that would do the job without costing an arm
and a leg.

Thanks in advance!

Is the PDF one of those hybrid ones, where a docx is inside the PDF ? LibreOffice probably cannot read that, but Microsoft Office might.

Paul

--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On 07/09/2026 10:03 AM, Stan Brown wrote:

I'm currently going through estate planning, and my attorney's office
gives me a new 80+ page document after each round of updates. You'd
think they'd give me a redline version, but no. I don't trust myself
to compare the versions on screen, and reading each draft of the
whole document is really time consuming, plus there's still the
possibility of missing something.

Is there any free software that runs in Windows and will show
differences between two PDFs? Because these are sensitive documents,
I don't want to upload them to a website. I tried googling, but
couldn't find anything that would do the job without costing an arm
and a leg.

Thanks in advance!

Prior to changing or during the 'change' process was there discussion of
what needed to be changed(their recommendation or yours).
--
...w¡ñ§±¤ñ
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On 7/9/2026 10:03 PM, Stan Brown wrote:

I'm currently going through estate planning, and my attorney's office
gives me a new 80+ page document after each round of updates. You'd
think they'd give me a redline version, but no. I don't trust.....

Not directly answering your question:

Firstly, tell your lawyers to separate text from images
and graphs. All images and graphs should be listed as
appendixes. Then it will easier for you to just first
compare the text than images.

The problem is: what if your lawyers refuse to do it? :)
--

@~@ Simplicity is Beauty! Remain silent! Drink, Blink, Stretch!
/ v \ May the Force and farces be with you! Live long and prosper!!
/( _ )\ https://sites.google.com/site/changmw/
^ ^ https://github.com/changmw/changmw
The game is afoot... Meow...
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From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On 07/09/2026 12:38 PM, Mr. Man-wai Chang wrote:

On 7/9/2026 10:03 PM, Stan Brown wrote:

I'm currently going through estate planning, and my attorney's office
gives me a new 80+ page document after each round of updates. You'd
think they'd give me a redline version, but no. I don't trust.....

Not directly answering your question:

Firstly, tell your lawyers to separate text from images
and graphs. All images and graphs should be listed as
appendixes. Then it will easier for you to just first
compare the text than images.

The problem is: what if your lawyers refuse to do it? :)

Legally drawn-up estate planning documents performed for a client by an attorney are routinely void of images and graphs.

Estate Planning documents
- Last Will and Testament
- Trust(usually Revocaable Living)
- Durable Power of Attorney (Financial management directions)
- Durable Power of(for) Healthcare or Advance Health Care Directive
- Designation of Beneficiary/Beneficiaries

No graphs. No images.

For the most part, your response is reasonably bizarre and
unconventional direction, possibly ignorant of the estate planning
process thus the reason for an off-the-wall response.
--
...w¡ñ§±¤ñ
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On 09/07/2026 15:03, Stan Brown wrote:

Is there any free software that runs in Windows and will show
differences between two PDFs? Because these are sensitive documents,
I don't want to upload them to a website. I tried googling, but
couldn't find anything that would do the job without costing an arm
and a leg.

If these are sensitive documents, your attorneys must surely have
flattened them before sending you the final version. A flattened
document will not highlight any changes to the text. Microsoft Word has
a feature that does exactly that. It also removes personal details such
as the author, creation and revision dates.



--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

In article <MPG.44b94a10121923519904c2@news.individual.net>, someone@example.com says...

I'm currently going through estate planning, and my attorney's office
gives me a new 80+ page document after each round of updates. You'd
think they'd give me a redline version, but no. I don't trust myself
to compare the versions on screen, and reading each draft of the
whole document is really time consuming, plus there's still the
possibility of missing something.

Is there any free software that runs in Windows and will show
differences between two PDFs? Because these are sensitive documents,
I don't want to upload them to a website. I tried googling, but
couldn't find anything that would do the job without costing an arm
and a leg.

Thanks in advance!

AI can do this, but you have to be very specific what you ask for, or
you'll get only semantic differences rather than textual ones.

See this: https://share.gemini.google/PWBcw5KnpPyp
--
--
Phil, London
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

Philip Herlihy wrote:

AI can do this, but you have to be very specific what you ask for

And you have to trust that your private PDFs won't end-up as part of its training dataset.
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On 10/07/2026 12:03 am, Stan Brown wrote:

I'm currently going through estate planning, and my attorney's office
gives me a new 80+ page document after each round of updates.

Do your Attorney's charge by the Word or by the Page?? ;-)
--
Daniel70
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On Thu, 9 Jul 2026 07:03:31 -0700, Stan Brown <someone@example.com>
wrote:

I'm currently going through estate planning, and my attorney's office
gives me a new 80+ page document after each round of updates. You'd
think they'd give me a redline version, but no. I don't trust myself
to compare the versions on screen, and reading each draft of the
whole document is really time consuming, plus there's still the
possibility of missing something.

Is there any free software that runs in Windows and will show
differences between two PDFs? Because these are sensitive documents,
I don't want to upload them to a website. I tried googling, but
couldn't find anything that would do the job without costing an arm
and a leg.

Thanks in advance!

Nitro Pro has a "Compare" feature. I'm using v.9 but here is a link to
the free "reader" v 13. Don't know if it will compare like the full
version does, but you can check it if you want. https://nitro-pdf-reader.en.softonic.com/download

>>>>>>>>>>jetjock<<<<<<<<<<
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On Thu, 9 Jul 2026 10:59:05 -0400, Paul wrote:

On 7/9/2026 10:03 AM, Stan Brown wrote:

I'm currently going through estate planning, and my attorney's office gives me a new 80+ page document after each round of updates. You'd
think they'd give me a redline version, but no. I don't trust myself
to compare the versions on screen, and reading each draft of the
whole document is really time consuming, plus there's still the possibility of missing something.

Is there any free software that runs in Windows and will show
differences between two PDFs? Because these are sensitive documents,
I don't want to upload them to a website. I tried googling, but
couldn't find anything that would do the job without costing an arm
and a leg.

Thanks in advance!

Is the PDF one of those hybrid ones, where a docx is inside the PDF ? LibreOffice probably cannot read that, but Microsoft Office might.

This is the first I'm hearing of such a thing. But MS-word couldn't
open it, and 7-zip offered to add it to an archive but not to extract
from it. So I think in my case this route is a no-go.
--
"The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by
those who don't have it." --George Bernard Shaw
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On Thu, 9 Jul 2026 11:59:26 -0400, ....winston wrote:

On 07/09/2026 10:03 AM, Stan Brown wrote:

I'm currently going through estate planning, and my attorney's office
gives me a new 80+ page document after each round of updates. You'd
think they'd give me a redline version, but no. I don't trust myself
to compare the versions on screen, and reading each draft of the
whole document is really time consuming, plus there's still the
possibility of missing something.

Is there any free software that runs in Windows and will show
differences between two PDFs? Because these are sensitive documents,
I don't want to upload them to a website. I tried googling, but
couldn't find anything that would do the job without costing an arm
and a leg.

Thanks in advance!

Prior to changing or during the 'change' process was there discussion of what needed to be changed(their recommendation or yours).

Not sure where you're going with this. There was indeed discussion.

But if you're suggesting I look at the document versions to see if my
changes have been done, did that before posting. In too many
instances, the paralegal or secretary made further mistakes in making
the corrections I pointed out, for instance misspelling a legatee's
name in a new way. I can point those out, and I have. But my concern
is undiscussed changes she may have made, perhaps through
carelessness. Some sort of diff seems the only reliable way to find
out if she did that.
--
"The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by
those who don't have it." --George Bernard Shaw
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On Fri, 10 Jul 2026 13:33:37 +0100, Philip Herlihy wrote:

In article <MPG.44b94a10121923519904c2@news.individual.net>, someone@example.com says...

I'm currently going through estate planning, and my attorney's office >gives me a new 80+ page document after each round of updates. You'd
think they'd give me a redline version, but no. I don't trust myself
to compare the versions on screen, and reading each draft of the
whole document is really time consuming, plus there's still the >possibility of missing something.

Is there any free software that runs in Windows and will show
differences between two PDFs? Because these are sensitive documents,
I don't want to upload them to a website. I tried googling, but
couldn't find anything that would do the job without costing an arm
and a leg.

Thanks in advance!

AI can do this, but you have to be very specific what you ask for, or
you'll get only semantic differences rather than textual ones.

See this: https://share.gemini.google/PWBcw5KnpPyp

I tried a few minutes ago at Winston's suggestion, but Word will not
open the PDFs so I can't convert them to Word format. I've used
Word's compare tool in the past, but since I can't get the PDFs into
Word format ...

I don't think I mentioned that I have Word 2010. Possibly if I had a
later version it would open the PDFs, but I can't see paying the cost
of a new Office for something I've needed once in sixteen years and
probably won't need for another sixteen. :-)
--
"The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by
those who don't have it." --George Bernard Shaw
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On Fri, 7/10/2026 8:58 AM, Andy Burns wrote:

Philip Herlihy wrote:

AI can do this, but you have to be very specific what you ask for

And you have to trust that your private PDFs won't end-up as part of its training dataset.

There may have been one "pdftotext" utility, which likely is not
part of Ghostscript, that puts text on the same baseline out
as text in the output document. That, and a copy of "diff" for patching,
might be able to detect differences. It would really help if the
document didn't have a lot of decorations at top and bottom.

I ended up using the WSL2 version of it, as the Windows version of (poppler) from Softonic, did not work. I probably haven't hand-installed it correctly, and it was just faster to test with WSL2.

pdftotext Windows-10-All-In-One-for-Dummies-4th-Edition.Pdf

This is a sample output (in Windows-10-All-In-One-for-Dummies-4th-Edition.Pdf.txt file ).
File type of that sample output is "Unicode Text":

******************************************* sample output ***********************************
[PDF 801 Page Number 779 Below "Reducing spam"
govern- ment was split on two lines, the software removed the hyphen and put two lines of text, on one line...]

Everybody hates spam, but nobody has any idea how to stop it. Not the government. Not Bill Gates. Not your sainted aunt’s podiatrist’s second cousin.
You think legislation can reduce the amount of spam? Since the US CAN-SPAM
Act (www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/canspam.html) became law on January 7,
2003, has the volume of spam you’ve received increased or decreased? Heck, I’ve
had more spam from politicians lately than from almost any other group. The very
people who are supposed to be enforcing the antispam laws seem to be spewing out spam overtime. <=== is missing a blank line here...
By and large, Windows is only tangentially involved in the spam game — it’s the
messenger, as it were. But every Windows user I know receives email. And every email user I know gets spam. Lots of it.

CHAPTER 1 Spies, Spams, and Scams Are Out to Get You <=== Title bar at bottom...
******************************************* sample output ***********************************

While this process is not OCR, the output is just as miserable
to look at as OCR output.

If I ran "diff" over the two output files, it would likely be rough going, especially if the pagination was changed even a little bit.

It would really be better to get the docx with change bars.

Paul

--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

I would upload to Google NotebookLM and let the AI do the comparison: https://notebooklm.google/
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On 7/10/2026 11:41 AM, Stan Brown wrote:

On Fri, 10 Jul 2026 13:33:37 +0100, Philip Herlihy wrote:

In article <MPG.44b94a10121923519904c2@news.individual.net>,
someone@example.com says...

I'm currently going through estate planning, and my attorney's office
gives me a new 80+ page document after each round of updates. You'd
think they'd give me a redline version, but no. I don't trust myself
to compare the versions on screen, and reading each draft of the
whole document is really time consuming, plus there's still the
possibility of missing something.

Is there any free software that runs in Windows and will show
differences between two PDFs? Because these are sensitive documents,
I don't want to upload them to a website. I tried googling, but
couldn't find anything that would do the job without costing an arm
and a leg.

Thanks in advance!

AI can do this, but you have to be very specific what you ask for, or
you'll get only semantic differences rather than textual ones.

See this: https://share.gemini.google/PWBcw5KnpPyp

I tried a few minutes ago at Winston's suggestion, but Word will not
open the PDFs so I can't convert them to Word format. I've used
Word's compare tool in the past, but since I can't get the PDFs into
Word format ...

I don't think I mentioned that I have Word 2010. Possibly if I had a
later version it would open the PDFs, but I can't see paying the cost
of a new Office for something I've needed once in sixteen years and
probably won't need for another sixteen. :-)

Word 2010 won't natively open pdf's. You need at least 2013 version.

BTW, You can get Office 2019 for $20

<https://www.stacksocial.com/sales/microsoft-office-professional-plus-2019-for-windows-7>

Office 2021 for $30

<https://www.stacksocial.com/sales/microsoft-office-professional-2021-for-windows-lifetime-license-10>

Office 2024 for $55

<https://www.stacksocial.com/sales/microsoft-office-2024-professional-plus>
--
Science Doesn’t Support Darwin. Scientists Do

--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On Thu, 9 Jul 2026 07:03:31 -0700, Stan Brown wrote:

I'm currently going through estate planning, and my attorney's office
gives me a new 80+ page document after each round of updates. You'd
think they'd give me a redline version, but no. I don't trust myself
to compare the versions on screen, and reading each draft of the
whole document is really time consuming, plus there's still the
possibility of missing something.

[And no uploading to websites.]

Suggestions to convert to Word and then use Word's compare tool
didn't work for my Word 2010. I can't see buying a later version of
Office for a one-time need. But the suggestions did cause me to think
about converting to plain text. Mutool, which is part of the mupdf
FOSS program, can convert PDFs to plain text.

1. mutool draw -F txt version1.pdf >version1.txt
2. csdiff version1.txt version2.txt

mupdf main site: https://mupdf.com/
mupdf downloads: https://mupdf.com/releases?product=MuPDF
mutool manpage: https://www.mankier.com/1/mutool (third party)

csdiff free program (via Internet Wayback Machine):

https://web.archive.org/web/20141018214421/http://www.componentsoftware.com/Products/CSDiff

csdiff is not open source but was a free program by Component
Solutions, but disappeared from their website some years ago when the
business changed direction. I've been using it since 2005, in Windows
XP, 7, 8.1, 10, and 11, and have had no problems.
--
"The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by
those who don't have it." --George Bernard Shaw
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On Fri, 7/10/2026 1:05 PM, Michael Logies wrote:

I would upload to Google NotebookLM and let the AI do the comparison: https://notebooklm.google/

You can run some AI models on a local computer, with the network cable unplugged.
The only problem I've seen so far, is the context size was limited to 4K, and normally it would be 128K or 256K or so. And that threatens analysis of longer documents.

Generally, the cloud AI I would normally use, "likes" a URL with text at the destination, rather than consuming text in the query window. Whether that burns more or less Context, is hard to guess.

And I've never asked an AI to compare two text files, like it was
a copy of "diff". It's just not conceptually what an AI is good at.
Just like it cannot count worth beans. A purpose-specific math module
is better at math concepts, and the text comparison task likely needs
something constructed for the purpose. And those are unlikely to be free.

You can do some amount of pdftotext with a utility from long ago.
I think it likely got forked, someone did a version in Python
(which is a nuisance to set up on Windows). It's also part of Poppler-Utilities.

Mutool can take PDF files apart, it has a conversion capability, and the conversion option likely supports text (not OCR to text, just embedded text to text).
That's another way you could try to do it. The reason pdftotext was suggested, is that will take text on a common baseline and keep it on that baseline. Whereas a lot of other utilities, dump "islands of text" sequentially, ruining the layout.

Paul
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On Fri, 10 Jul 2026 12:09:23 -0500, sticks wrote:

Office 2024 for $55

<https://www.stacksocial.com/sales/microsoft-office-2024-professional-plus>

I've been aware of Stack Social's "fire sales", but have always been
nervous because it seemed like a substantial minority of purchasers
get non-working licenses.

But I'm torn. There are a few features of newer Excel that I'd like
to try, though they're not must-haves. $54.99 is just the cost of a
meal at a restaurant these days, so that doesn't seem like a big
obstacle.

One thing does worry me, though. I don't have a Microsoft account.
The page says "This licensing type will be connected with your actual
device, NOT your Microsoft account." I guess that means I don't need
a Microsoft account to activate it. But what about downloading the
installer?
--
"The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by
those who don't have it." --George Bernard Shaw
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On Fri, 10 Jul 2026 19:05:34 +0200, Michael Logies wrote:

I would upload to Google NotebookLM and let the AI do the comparison: https://notebooklm.google/

But with AI, can we be sure the document is not sent to Microsoft or
Google?
--
"The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by
those who don't have it." --George Bernard Shaw
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On 7/10/2026 1:32 PM, Stan Brown wrote:

On Fri, 10 Jul 2026 12:09:23 -0500, sticks wrote:

Office 2024 for $55

<https://www.stacksocial.com/sales/microsoft-office-2024-professional-plus>

I've been aware of Stack Social's "fire sales", but have always been
nervous because it seemed like a substantial minority of purchasers
get non-working licenses.

I would guess people who mostly are not very capable, but I know if the
code won't work they'll just send one that does. I've never had any
problems with them.

But I'm torn. There are a few features of newer Excel that I'd like
to try, though they're not must-haves. $54.99 is just the cost of a
meal at a restaurant these days, so that doesn't seem like a big
obstacle.

I had 2003 for years, and did have 2010 on one machine. As my documents
and spreadsheets got more complicated it became an issue. There were difficult script workarounds that I didn't want to do. Searching for
ways to do things or having functions or formatting that could do what I wanted, I decided to go ahead and upgrade on one machine to version
2019. Much more function and capability and I was duly impressed. I am
not really an MS fanboi and even used open office for some things (I
install that for friends that need to open things), but I will admit I
use the hell out of it and it is great software.

One thing does worry me, though. I don't have a Microsoft account.
The page says "This licensing type will be connected with your actual
device, NOT your Microsoft account." I guess that means I don't need
a Microsoft account to activate it. But what about downloading the
installer?

I've bought this from them 4 times now. 1-2019 and 3-2021. They send
you an email with the necessary licensing numbers and a link to download
the software, which I believe is <https://setup.office.com/>. It is
super easy and you would have no problems getting it done and using it immediately. You can only install it on one machine at a time, but if
you decide to put it on another computer, you can delete it from being
used there and install it on the other. I think this is done on a
microsoft account and have done it one time, but I can't remember for sure.
--
Science Doesn’t Support Darwin. Scientists Do

--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On 2026-07-10 19:01, Paul wrote:

On Fri, 7/10/2026 8:58 AM, Andy Burns wrote:

Philip Herlihy wrote:

...

While this process is not OCR, the output is just as miserable
to look at as OCR output.

If I ran "diff" over the two output files, it would likely be rough going, especially if the pagination was changed even a little bit.

In Linux, I would use "meld" instead.

It would really be better to get the docx with change bars.

Paul

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.
ES🇪🇸, EU🇪🇺;
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

Stan Brown wrote:

[snip]

But if you're suggesting I look at the document versions to see if my
changes have been done, did that before posting. In too many
instances, the paralegal or secretary made further mistakes in making
the corrections I pointed out, for instance misspelling a legatee's
name in a new way. I can point those out, and I have. But my concern
is undiscussed changes she may have made, perhaps through
carelessness. Some sort of diff seems the only reliable way to find
out if she did that.

When I did computer support some of my clients were solicitors. The
were almost always very disorganised and completely inept when using computers. That was 10 years ago, but I doubt there has been much
improvement since then.

For example, in your case the further mistakes in correcting an existing mistake may arise because a typist simply re-typed the whole document
from scratch!

Have you raised your concerns with somebody senior? i.e. not the
paralegal who used the computer?

Some solicitors use a document management program, so any underlying
Word document may contain fields which are filled from the client
database with anything from the client's name to whole boilerplate
paragraphs. Thus the only human-readable output format may well be a
PDF file.

If your solicitor can provide "before" and "after" versions of the
document in a form which you can use, there may be a (significant) cost.

If not, your only option may be to change solicitor, citing their
inability to provide files for automated comparison and their propensity
to add further mistakes when making corrections. If you go down this
route it may be worth asking competing solicitors how they would resolve
your difficulty - without mentioning the current firm (I think they do
talk to each other!)

A less costly option may be to print out all 80 pages of both the
"before" and "after" versions, so that you and a trusted colleague can
read them aloud together - possibly each person taking alternate
sentences. That could take 40 hours, so it gives you a budget for doing
the work.
--
Graham J
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From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

Graham J wrote on 7/10/2026 4:34 PM:

Stan Brown wrote:

[snip]

But if you're suggesting I look at the document versions to see if my
changes have been done,  did that before posting. In too many
instances, the paralegal or secretary made further mistakes in making
the corrections I pointed out, for instance misspelling a legatee's
name in  a new way. I can point those out, and I have. But my concern
is undiscussed changes she may have made, perhaps through
carelessness. Some sort of diff seems the only reliable way to find
out if she did that.

When I did computer support some of my clients were solicitors.  The
were almost always very disorganised and completely inept when using computers.  That was 10 years ago, but I doubt there has been much improvement since then.

For example, in your case the further mistakes in correcting an existing mistake may arise because a typist simply re-typed the whole document
from scratch!

Have you raised your concerns with somebody senior?  i.e. not the
paralegal who used the computer?

Some solicitors use a document management program, so any underlying
Word document may contain fields which are filled from the client
database with anything from the client's name to whole boilerplate paragraphs.  Thus the only human-readable output format may well be a
PDF file.

If your solicitor can provide "before" and "after" versions of the
document in a form which you can use, there may be a (significant) cost.

If not, your only option may be to change solicitor, citing their
inability to provide files for automated comparison and their propensity
to add further mistakes when making corrections.  If you go down this
route it may be worth asking competing solicitors how they would resolve your difficulty - without mentioning the current firm (I think they do
talk to each other!)

A less costly option may be to print out all 80 pages of both the
"before" and "after" versions, so that you and a trusted colleague can
read them aloud together - possibly each person taking alternate sentences.  That could take 40 hours, so it gives you a budget for doing the work.

Maybe quit working for lawyers would be less stressful? They will
always draw you into their world of deceit. If you walk into it with
your eyes open, you deserve what you get.


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