Like any editor, Notepad provides support for the comparison of files using the compare plugin. Compare plugin compares the files with

  • Compare text content
  • Difference between two code files
  • Compare two versions of the same file

It also shows differences between the below things highlighted colors.

  • Line added
  • line removed
  • line modified This tutorial works on the latest version 8.1 or more.

How to Compare text content files in a Notepad++ text editor?

Here are the steps to compare the files in the Notepad text editor.

  • Open notepad++ text editor( Version 8.x or more)

  • Select Menu Plugins > Plugins Admin menu item

  • It opens the Plugins Admin window and type compare in the Search box.

  • It shows below the window and selects Compare plugin as given below

    Notepad++ Compare text files content

  • And, the Select install button installs the plugin.

  • Open the files that you want to compare in two separate tabs in Notepad++

  • Next, Select Plugins Menu> Compare > Compare Option(Ctrl + Alt +C)

    Open compare plugin for compare files

  • Two Files are shown and split between the editor in the side-by-side view.

  • You will see conflicting lines highlighted as seen below

  • Also, You can see arrow icons in blue colors to navigate next and previous differences Notepad++ Compare files highlighted differences differences

  • You can close the split windows and close compare features using Select Plugins Menu> Compare > Clear All Compare Option(Ctrl + Alt + Shift +X)

Also, the Compare plugin has a few options as shown above.

  • Set As First to Compare - Shortcut Ctrl + Alt + 1

    It sets the foreground file as the first file and the background file as the second file and compares both these files

  • Compare - Shortcut Ctrl + Alt +C

Compare two files and show the differences in highlighted color. These options compare a file that opened this option with another file.

  • Clear Active Compare (Ctrl + Alt +X)
  • Clear All Compare` Option(Ctrl + Alt + Shift +X)

Both are used to close Active and all compare windows.

  • Svn Diff (Ctrl + Alt +V) Compare the selected file’s local version with the remote version of a file in the svn repository.

  • Git Diff (Ctrl + Alt +G) Compare file version with remote git repository

  • Ignore Spaces are ignored, default is unchecked

  • Navigation Bar: Show navigation bar helps with blue icons to go to file location instead of scroll

  • Detect Moves: icon show or hide for line add or remove

Also you have different configurations to Compare plugin settings

Go to Plugins - Compare - Settings, Settings window shown.

We can configure different styles like

  • color for line added, removed, conflict
  • First file as old file position