This week, I’m going to share another great tip I found by subscribing to the Tech-Talk email newsletter. You may already be aware that you can “snap” windows to be side-by-side or top to bottom on your screen for easy comparison. If you are comparing documents, manually scrolling snapped windows can be annoying. Thankfully, Microsoft Word has a feature that allows you to scroll through both documents with a single motion. Unfortunately, Google Docs and Word Online do not support synchronous scrolling.
Setting Up Synchronized Scrolling
To enable synchronous scrolling, open both documents. Make sure you are scrolled to the top in both documents; otherwise, alignment will be skewed.
In one of the documents, go to the View tab and click “View Side by Side” in the “Window” section
Synchronous scrolling should be activated automatically after you click “View Side by Side.” If it isn’t, go back to the Window section and select it:
Click in the body of one of the documents and start scrolling:
To end Synchronous Scrolling, go back to the Window section and click Synchronous Scrolling again so it’s not highlighted:
Summary
Use Synchronous Scrolling in Microsoft Word’s desktop version to easily compare two documents. For more great tips, check out Tech-Talk or sign up for the Tech-Talk newsletter.
