You can click a color to jump to its position in the text or close Nav Bar. It shows the color codes displayed in the two texts: purple (the line with the cursor's current position), yellow (different lines), green (lines that exist in only one document and are missing in the other), red (lines that are missing in a document but exist in the other), dark grey (lines that were moved) and light grey (blank lines).

A new pane is displayed too, called Nav Bar ( Navigation Bar). The two text documents will be placed side by side in the main app window. Next, open the Plugins menu and Compare submenu to select Compare (or press Alt+D). Perform the same operation for the second text document you want to verify (multiple tabs are supported by Notepad++, so you can open new files without closing the current one). Alternatively, open the File menu and select New (or press Ctrl+N) to create a new blank document and paste text copied from another source. Open the File menu and click Open (or press Ctrl+O) and use the built-in file browser to locate and open a text document or drop the file into the main window of Notepad++. Notepad++ users have a plugin installed by default into the text editor. One of them is a plugin for Notepad++ ( Compare) while the other two have richer options: Meld and Beyond Compare.

In the following guide, we're looking into three utilities to show you the quickest way to compare two documents and spot the differences. Text comparison tools are useful for many purposes, whether you want to verify the source code of a program to create patches, find out which files from separate parts of the computer contain your latest notes, or check out logs with statistics recorded by an application at various times.

Notepad++ compare plugin missing