DiffEngineX LLC

Although DiffEngineX is not currently exposed as a COM component or DLL class library, it is possible to invoke DiffEngineX programmatically from software, as well as from the Windows Command Prompt. DiffEngineX can be driven by command line arguments. A full list of arguments is given in the help file available from the DiffEngineX menu item Help-->Help Topics-->Command Line Arguments. The list is also available on our Internet help page.

A snippet of C# .NET source code showing how to do this is given below. Although the string assigned to .Arguments has been split across several lines here, ensure that your code is on a single one.

(The /outbook1 and /outbook2 arguments are optional, if you don't want to save the DiffEngineX created reports to your filesystem. As /show has been used, the /report argument is also optional in the example below.)

namespace CallDiffEngineXExample
{
private void CallDiffEngineXProgrammatically1()
{
Process process = new Process();
try
{
string filename = @"C:\Program Files\Florencesoft\DiffEngineX\DiffEngineX.exe";
process.StartInfo.FileName = filename;
process.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = true;
process.StartInfo.Arguments = @"/inbook1:""C:\Users\Bob\test worksheets\original.xlsx""
/inbook2:""C:\Users\Bob\test worksheets\modified.xlsx""
/report:report1.xlsx
/outbook1:outbook1.xlsx
/outbook2:outbook2.xlsx
/compareexcelnames
/coloralternaterows
/addhyperlinks
/colordifferences
/show";
process.Start();
process.WaitForExit();
}
catch
{

}
finally
{
process.Close();
}
}
}

Version 2.14 of DiffEngineX can compare the Visual Basic code and macros contained in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. The new difference report is in HTML format and is viewed in your default web browser.

Version 2.01 of DiffEngineX allows you to specify a minimum percentage change between two numbers before they are flagged as different.

Version 2 of DiffEngineX can better handle large numbers of differences, when hyperlink navigation is turned on. It can handle the case when Excel 2007 has compatibility mode turned on by default.

A new option has been added to compare Excel cell comments.

If a workbook of interest is compared against a blank spreadsheet, this option will effectively create a list of all the comments.

DiffEngineX can now treat numeric values as equal if they differ less than a specified value. This adds to its previous ability of being able to round numbers to a specified number of decimal places before comparing them.

NOTE: If you wish to compare the calculated values of formulae, rather than the formulae text itself, you should select the option Their Calculated Values.