Comparing documents with tables

User Support Writer
1

Hello, I am new to Collabora Office. I have installed it from Flathub. The installed version is 26.04.2.4 (git hash: 9e9db9c7fe).

When I click the button in the toolbar to compare two files (*.odt), it allows me to choose an older version of the file. The comparison appears to work in general. However, any tables that have some changes in them, are marked as replaced in full. There does not seem to be any way to display what exactly have changed within any given table.

This is a problem to me because I work with cross-border business. Most of the documents that I have to work with are bilingual where the text is formatted in two-column tables with one language to the one side of the table and another language to another side of the table. I am not aware of any other practical way to present bilingual text side by side. However, if I attempt to compare versions of such documents to display changes, it does not seem to be possible in Collabora Office.

Should I configure the program somehow to look for changes within tables? Or is this feature being developed?

2

Hello @roman and welcome!

  • There is no setting for this. The comparison engine treats a table as
    one block. If any text inside it differs, the whole table is marked as
    replaced instead of showing the changed cells. Nothing is misconfigured
    on your side.

  • Workaround: Edit > Track Changes > Record Changes. This works inside
    table cells and shows exactly which words changed, if it is turned on
    before editing.

  • Workaround: split large tables into several smaller ones, for example
    one per clause. A change then only marks that smaller table.

  • Cell-level comparison is not being developed at the moment. Please
    file a feature request at Issues · CollaboraOnline/online · GitHub
    with two small sample files, and post the link here so we can track it.

Cheers
Darshan