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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  1. Table Compare

Keys

Key columns should have values that are (somewhat) unique to a given row, such as an ID number. Beyond Compare will give them precedence when trying to align your two tables.

PreviousExample: finding missing items in a pair of spreadsheetsNextMismatched Columns

Last updated 5 years ago

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Incorrect

For effective use of Table Compare it is crucial to set the right columns as your keys. The following table of sea ice thickness shows inappropriate keys and therefore poor alignment:

Correct

By rightclicking the column tops we set the keys to a more unique identifier. In this case we chose date as the most unique key. In general, key columns should have values that are (somewhat) unique to a given row. Key columns are often independent variables rather than dependant variables. In the comparison below, date is the independant variable.

Try it out yourself. Start a Table Compare session by pressing ctl-T and then click Table Compare. Or from the pulldown: Session->NewSession->TableCompare. Then browse or use your mouse to drag and drip two Excel files.

When the comparison loads, the rows might not align well. With the mouse, right click on your column tops to make them keys or not keys.

Don't worry: nothing you do will change your Excel file: it is read-only in Beyond Compare. And if you don't like what you do to the columns, you can undo your settings with the button at Rules->Columns->ResetAll.

To investigate the subject of Key Columns, read about SQL and.

relational databases
Sea Ice Data, with incorrect keys in the column top
Sea Ice Data. Moving the key to column 2 gives improved alignment