How Do I Use Beyond Compare: Introduction to Beyon
  • Forty things about Beyond Compare
  • Acknowledgements
  • Learn Beyond Compare in 5 Minutes
    • Quickstart: open two directories
    • Quickstart: open two files
    • Quickstart: move a file
    • Text Compare: understand the display
    • Downloads
  • Text Compare
    • How to use Beyond Compare for Text Compare
    • In Beyond Compare, what are unimportant differences?
    • Why no word-wrap ??
    • How to use Beyond Compare to confirm 100% replacement
    • Ignore Trivial Differences, Like Timestamps
  • Git
    • How to use Beyond Compare with Git
    • Do a roll-back to peek at your old code
    • Quickstart: Folder Merge
    • Why merge three folders?
    • Beyond Compare Three-Way Folder Merge Symbols Explained
    • How to compare two commits, both old, in Git
    • Git mergetool: merging three files.
    • How to recover an older version of your code with Git and Beyond Compare
    • Peeking under the hood at how Git does its thing
    • Getting better at Git
    • Find changes since last commit
    • Patches
    • How to configure Visual Studio to use Beyond Compare for Version Control
  • Scripts and the Command Line
    • How to use Beyond Compare in the Terminal
    • How to do an automatic backup every day
    • Write a Batch File That Will Start Several Syncs Simultaneously
    • Write a batch file that will start several text compares automatically
    • TL; DR
  • Table Compare
    • Quickstart: open a couple of Excel spreadsheets
    • Example: finding missing items in a pair of spreadsheets
    • Keys
    • Mismatched Columns
    • Longer example, opening .csv files
    • How to remove columns from a spreadsheet
    • Aligned vs Unaligned
    • Example: List of City Trees
  • Sync / Folders
    • Backup your entire computer (Part One)
    • Backup your entire computer (Part Two)
    • Backup, advanced
    • RegEx Examples: Filename Alignment Overide
    • Scan a lot or a little
  • Other
    • Peek
    • Binary
    • Undo
    • Colors
    • How to compare images
    • Report: Text Compare
    • Report: Table Compare
    • Looooonnnnngggg lines...
    • Binary: How to see the 1's and 0's
    • How to write your first script
    • How to find redundant or duplicate files
    • Minor Edge Cases
    • Shortcut Key
    • How to ignore parts of your file
    • Folder System Context Menus
    • About Evan Genest
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  • Option 1
  • Option 2
  • Big advantages of using Beyond Compare for copying things:

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  1. Learn Beyond Compare in 5 Minutes

Quickstart: move a file

If you find the interface of Beyond Compare (BC) intuitive, skip this page.

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Last updated 6 years ago

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Option 1

Situation: You installed Beyond Compare. Now all you want to do is move files from Point A to Point B and call it a day.

From the pulldown menu choose Session->NewSession->FolderCompare Load a source folder by dragging it with the mouse and dropping it on the left side, anywhere. Load a destination folder by dragging and dropping it to the right side. On the left side, with the mouse, left-click to choose your folder(s). Then right-click the mouse for this context menu:

Option 2

Alternatively, try doing your copy with the specialized Folder Sync session, especially if 99% of what you want to do in Beyond Compare is usually copying folders and files.

From the pulldown menu choose Session->NewSession->FolderSync Use right-click if you want to turn these arrows on/off (1). Each arrow is a prediction toggle of which files are about to get copied. When you are ready, press SyncNow button (2). There is no undo, so maybe try a few small test files first.

Big advantages of using Beyond Compare for copying things:

  • BC can open and preview more types of files more guickly than either Finder or Explorer.

  • Unlike your computer's file system, Beyond Compare is unlikely to create 99 confusing copies of the same file all over the place. Beyond Compare's core competency is checking the two files and overwriting the older, smaller, less-desirable one. Beyond Compare is for neat people or maybe messy people who envy neat people.

  • Your folders can be remote, like, in the cloud or reachable by FTP type protocols. If you are remote from your server, Beyond Compare is like a deluxe version of Filezilla or termal FTP.

  • If you are on Windows, BC is much more intuitive for poking around in your tree than Windows Explorer.. The Expand button toggles the whole tree open and closed.

  • The flatten-folder-tree feature is worth the price alone. From the menu of a large FolderCompare session, try this: View->IgnoreFolderStructureMy favorite!

  • If you are a power user, you can set Folder Sync to happen as a scheduled task in your operating system. This requires that you know how to find a file from the command line of your machine.