How to View Word Documents Side by Side

There may be times when you need to refer to content in different Word documents at once.

I was recently working onsite at a client’s office and they were looking at a couple of Word documents on their screen. They were switching back and forth between the two documents and kept losing their place.

This is not an ideal way of comparing content.

I showed them a quick and easy way to split their screen and view the documents side by side. I also created a guide for them to refer to.

This is a handy tip on how to view Word documents side by side.

• Open both documents that you want to compare.

• On the View tab, select View Side by Side.

• You can scroll through both documents at the same time to compare the content line by line and check for differences. So, when you scroll through one document, the other document will also scroll.

• You can also scroll each document independently, by deselecting  Synchronous Scrolling.

• To go back to one document, select View Side by Side.

If you have more than two Word documents open, then you will be asked to select the ones you want to view side by side.