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How to compare Excel sheets side by side?

Author: Sun Last Modified: 2020-10-12

If there are two or more sheets across workbooks needed to compare with each other, it may be annoying for you to switch them one by one for comparing. Here I introduce the tricks on comparing sheets side by side horizontally or vertically as below screenshot shown.

Compare multiple sheets side by side with Arrange All function

Compare two lists in difference sheets and find duplicates with Kutools for Excel good idea3
doc compare sheets side by side 1


arrow blue right bubble Compare multiple sheets side by side with Arrange All function

In Excel, you can compare multiple sheets across different workbooks with the Arrange All function.

1. Open all workbooks you want to compare, and activate one of them, and click View > Arrange All. See screenshot:
doc compare sheets side by side 2

2. Then the Arrange Windows dialog pops out, you can check one option in the Arrange section as you need.
doc compare sheets side by side 3

2. Click OK, and the workbooks windows will be arranged side by side.

Tiled: arrange and resize all opened workbooks so that all of them can be fitted side by side on the screen. See screenshot:
doc compare sheets side by side 4

Horizontal: resize the workbooks windows equally and arrange them one above one horizontally. See screenshot:
doc compare sheets side by side 5

Vertical: resize workbooks in same size and arrange them left to right. See screenshot:
doc compare sheets side by side 6

Cascade: arrange and size workbooks overlap one and another with each title bar shown only. See screenshot:
doc compare sheets side by side 7


arrow blue right bubble Compare two lists in difference sheets and find duplicates with Kutools for Excel

If you just want to compare two data lists in different sheets in the one workbook for finding the different or same values, you can apply Kutools for Excel’s Select Same & Different Cells utility to quickly compare two lists by cells or rows as below screenshot shown.
doc compare sheets side by side 8

Kutools for Excel, equipped with AI 🤖, offers over 300 handy features to simplify your tasks.

After free installing Kutools for Excel, please do as below:

1. Select the first one list you want to compare to, and click Kutools > Select > Select Same & Different Cells. See screenshot:
doc compare sheets side by side 9

2. Then in the Select Same & Different Cells dialog, click doc select button in According to: (Range B) to select the second list you want to compare with the first list. See screenshot:
doc compare sheets side by side 10

3. Then you can check My data has headers option to exclude headers when comparing if there are same headers in the two lists, and select one option in the Based on and Find section as you need, if you want to highlight the selected same values or different values, you can check Fill background or Fill font color option in Processing of result section. See screenshot:
doc compare sheets side by side 11

4. Click Ok, and a dialog pops out to remind you the number of same values or different values in the two lists. See screenshot:
doc compare sheets side by side 12

5. Click OK to close the popping remind dialog.

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