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How to compare two Pages documents






I worked for a long time on a Pages document:

file.1.pages.


Since I didn't plan to make many modifications, I didn't activate

Edit > Track Changes

silly me 😊!


I saved the modified Pages document with a new name:

file.2.pages


Now I would like to check I didn't forget a key point or made any error during my

modifications. Well I would like to review and check all the modifications I made.


How may I compare

file.1.pages

and

file.2.pages


This isn't a comparison I can deal with manually:

  • too much text,
  • too many small spelling fixes,
  • many unsignificant formatting changes.


Wasting a lot of time within the over long menus of Pages, I didn't find anything that

could help me solve this very basic function of a text editor.

I think I should be blind not to see this elementary function.

Silly me 😊!


Next I searched on the web for any receipe to achieve it, and with the problem

caused by the name of this software ( Pages ) I just found 2 tons of irrelevant answers

and nothing simple, easy to use.


Note: I am at ease with all the command line tools, and would appreciate such a way to deal with

this function. For example, with:

vi

this is trivially achieved with:

diff file.1 file.2

within less than 2 seconds to type this command line.

And in a modern IT world, this should be easier with a graphical user interface in a tool like Pages.


Of course his is a question independant of any version of hardware and macOS.

I filled the field asked to feed the robot, but it's irrelevant 😊.

MacBook Pro (2017 – 2020)

Posted on Oct 10, 2024 1:27 AM

Reply
1 reply

Oct 10, 2024 2:47 AM in response to Zorba_le_grec

Pages documents are zipped packages containing binary encrypted data and potentially, images. No tool, visual or command-line, can compare two Pages documents for the preceding reason.


Due to a different internal document organization and application design, Microsoft Word can compare two Word documents from its Review menu. Thus, exporting two Pages documents as Word .docx and using MS Word to perform the comparison is your only solution, short of just using MS Word in the first place.

How to compare two Pages documents

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