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External Diff: configuring Microsoft Excel spreadsheet diffs

If one has Microsoft Office installed, a tool called “SpreadSheet Compare” exists which is usually located at C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\DCF\spreadsheetcompare. From command line, it takes a text file with two lines; each line is a file name.

To call this from SmartGit, in the Preferences, create a Diff Tool for e.g. *.xls pattern with Arguments ${leftFile} ${rightFile} and set Command to a script like the following:

@ECHO OFF
rem smartgit diff passes two arguments: old-file, new-file.
set TEMP_FILE=%TEMP%\smartgit-excel-diff.txt
ECHO %1 > %TEMP_FILE%
ECHO %2 >> %TEMP_FILE%
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\vfs\ProgramFilesX86\Microsoft Office\Office16\DCF\spreadsheetcompare" %TEMP_FILE%

Note

For older/ 32-Bit MS Office versions, the executable’s path may be:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\DCF\spreadsheetcompare"