Spreadsheet Compare & Merge Tool for Excel - Combine Excel Files into One Spreadsheet Compare & Merge Tool for Excel - Combine Excel Files into One

Download Spreadsheet Compare & Merge Tool for Excel and Combine Excel Files into One

Spreadsheet Compare & Merge Tool for Excel by SoftOrbits is an Excel file combiner and a comparison tool in one window. It folds a folder of workbooks into a single file, then shows what changed between two versions of a table. The files are read by the program itself. Excel does not have to be installed on the machine that does the work.

   
 Download for Free
Spreadsheet Compare & Merge Tool for Excel - Combine Excel Files into One Screenshot.
Twelve branch exports land in one folder, and no two of them agree on the header row. One file says Name, the next says Full Name, a third has shortened revenue to Rev. SoftOrbits Spreadsheet Compare & Merge tool reads them into a single table anyway: columns are matched by the text of their titles, and a file that is missing a column leaves blanks instead of shifting your data one place to the left. A month later the same report comes back with edits in it. Load both versions and the program paints what moved, cell by cell, so nobody has to read two thousand rows with a ruler.

How to download and use the Spreadsheet Compare & Merge Tool for Excel

Add your files.

1. Add your files

1. Add your files

Download the Spreadsheet Compare & Merge tool and drag the workbooks into the list, or add a whole folder. A CSV export can sit in the batch next to a workbook, and the order you set in list is the order they are written.

Decide how the columns line up.

2. Decide how the columns line up

2. Decide how the columns line up

By order puts column 1 under column 1. By header matches columns by their titles instead of by their position. Files with different columns still land in the right place, and the result keeps every column any of the files had.

Compare two Excel workbooks.

3. Compare two Excel workbooks

3. Compare two Excel workbooks

Put the old file on the left and the new one on the right. The two grids scroll together. Changed values get one color, a changed formula another, and rows that appeared or disappeared their own. The legend sits beside the grids.

Export the result.

4. Export the result

4. Export the result

Name the output .xlsx or .csv; the extension decides the format. Differences can leave as an XLSX with the cells filled in, or as a CSV list a script can read. An HTML or PDF report covers the case where somebody just wants to print it.

Three hours in a query editor, and still no merged file.

Three hours in a query editor, and still no merged file

The free route is Power Query, and it does work - on tidy input. Microsoft's own documentation states the condition plainly. To combine files they must all have "the same structure and the same extension". Folders in the wild are rarely like that. People on r/excel describe headers which are always slightly off between the files, and one of them spent about three hours on a two-file merge before giving up on the join. Spreadsheet Compare & Merge asks for none of that setup. Add the files, pick by order or by header, press the button.

   
 Download for Free

Your edition of Office may have no compare tool at all

Excel ships something called Spreadsheet Compare, and most people never find it, because it is not in their copy. Microsoft's own support page lists it as available only with Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise. A Personal, Family, Business or Professional subscription does not include it, and the Inquire add-in it belongs to has to be switched on by hand. That is why the same question returns on forums with five different partial answers under it. This program does not care which edition you own, or whether Office is on the machine at all.

   
 Download for Free

Your edition of Office may have no compare tool at all.
Payroll and price lists never leave the computer.

Payroll and price lists never leave the computer

Search for a way to compare two Excel files for differences and much of the first page is browser tools. Every one of them starts by asking you to upload the file. For payroll figures or a client price list, that is where the conversation ends in most companies. Spreadsheet Compare & Merge runs on your own PC and writes its output next to the source files. Nothing is uploaded and there is no account to create.

   
 Download for Free

Nine kinds of difference

The compare view does not just paint a cell red. A changed value, a changed formula, a changed format, a row that showed up or vanished, a column gone or new, a whole worksheet added or removed. Nine classes, each named and counted, with Prev and Next to step through them.

Columns matched by their titles

Matching by header builds the union of every title in the batch and normalizes case and the spaces around it. A column with an empty title is matched by position instead. A title that appears twice inside one file stays two columns, because collapsing them would silently fold two different things together.

A damaged file does not kill the batch

A workbook that cannot be read gets its own line in the report and the rest of the batch continues. Excel stops at 1,048,576 rows per sheet, so a merge that would cross that line stops with a message instead of quietly dropping the rows that do not fit. A workbook saved with the 1904 date system is converted on the way in, which keeps dates from moving four years.

Built for real volume

Fifty workbooks of 10,000 rows each fold into 500,001 rows in 8.64 seconds, with a peak of 220 MB, and memory grows in a straight line as files are added. A pair of 100,000-row sheets is checked in 6.56 seconds. Both figures come from our own tests, not from anyone else's.

Export that travels

The XLSX export carries the fills and puts the legend on its own sheet. A colleague who has no such program opens it in Excel and reads it there. The CSV export uses a fixed English header - Sheet, RowLeft, RowRight, Cell, OldValue, NewValue, Type - whatever the interface language is set to. A parser written today therefore keeps working. An HTML or PDF report is there for printing.

A splitter comes with it

Row count or the value of a column decides where the cuts fall. The header is repeated in every part, the index in the file name is zero-padded so Explorer sorts 01, 02, 10 rather than 1, 10, 2, and the program refuses to write a part over the file it is splitting.

Spreadsheet Compare & Merge Tool for Excel - Combine Excel Files into One
Spreadsheet Compare & Merge Tool for Excel - Combine Excel Files into OneDownload the Spreadsheet Compare & Merge Tool for Excel, point it at a folder of workbooks and let it build one file. Then compare that file against last month's version without opening either of them.
 Download

Who needs Spreadsheet Compare & Merge Tool

Finance and accounting

Month end arrives with a dozen branch exports and none of them are shaped the same. Combine them into one sheet to pivot, then compare this month's price list against the last one and read only what changed.

Operations and warehouse

CRM and warehouse systems export in pieces, forty CSV files at a time, and the delimiter is whatever the source decided to use. Merge them, or go the other way and split a master table into one file per branch before sending it out.

Analysts and IT

Two configuration workbooks, one from UAT and one from production. They share a key column, so align rows by it and the diff answers in seconds. The CSV list of differences then goes straight into a script.

Formats it reads and writes

Input and output are not the same list. Only .xlsx and .csv are written, and the old binary formats are not read at all - resave those as .xlsx in any spreadsheet program first.

FormatExtensionReadsWrites
Excel workbook.xlsxYesYes
Macro-enabled workbook.xlsmYesNo
Comma-separated values.csvYesYes
Tab-separated values.tsvYesNo
Legacy Excel workbook.xlsNoNo
Excel binary workbook.xlsbNoNo
Difference report.html, .pdfNoYes
 Download for Free
Spreadsheet Compare & Merge Tool for Excel - Combine Excel Files into One

Spreadsheet Compare & Merge Tool for Excel - Combine Excel Files into One

Languages
File Size

12 Mb

Version

3.2

Last updated on

21/08/26

$ 19.99

🖥️ System Requirements

  • Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7 (32/64 bit)
  • Intel i3, AMD Ryzen 5 or above
  • 4 GB of RAM or above
  • NVIDIA® GeForce® series 8 and 8M, Intel® HD Graphics 2000, Quadro FX 4800, Quadro FX 5600, AMD Radeon™ R600, Mobility Radeon™ HD 4330, Mobility FirePro™ series, Radeon™ R5 M230 or higher graphics card with up-to-date drivers
  • 1280 × 768 screen resolution, 32-bit color
  • 1 GB of free hard disk space or above

🙋 Frequently Asked Questions

Switch the column mode to by header. From that point the title text decides where a column lands, not its place in the file, so a table where somebody moved a column two positions to the right still lines up with the rest. What comes out carries all the titles it met on the way, and a file that never had one of them leaves those cells empty instead of pushing the row sideways.

In a merge a column decides how the files line up, not which rows are joined. Matching by header puts data under the right titles when files disagree about column order. What a merge does not do is a lookup-style join, where a row from one file is glued to a row from another by a shared key. If that is what you need, run the comparison instead and pick that column as the key. It aligns the two tables by it and reports what is on one side and not on the other.

Short answer: Excel has one, but it is probably not in your edition, and the benefit above says which build actually ships it. Long answer: browser comparison sites are the other free road, and every one of them wants the file uploaded first. The unregistered copy of this Excel compare tool shows the first 25 differences, which is enough to see whether it answers your question at all.

Yes. Columns are aligned by their headers before the rows are compared, and a column that changed places is flagged as moved rather than reported as one column deleted and another added. A column that exists on one side only gets a gray placeholder on the other. The two grids stay in step while you scroll.

Short answer: load them the same way, the size is handled. Long answer: a pair of 100,000-row sheets compares in about 6.5 seconds on the build we measured. Each grid draws only the rows on screen, which keeps scrolling responsive even on a table that large. The limit is Excel's own, 1,048,576 rows per sheet, and a merge that would cross it stops with a message.

Online mergers exist and they are fine for a one-off file you do not mind sending to somebody else's server. That is the trade you make, and for a 40 MB export of client records most people will not make it. This program does the same job on your own machine, which is the reason most people working with payroll, client or price data end up on a desktop tool.

The usual way to compare spreadsheets is to tile two Excel windows, but they scroll on their own and nothing is highlighted. Here the two versions open in two grids that scroll together, and every difference is color-coded by class with a legend beside it. Prev and Next jump from one difference to the next instead of leaving you to find them.

Two at a time. Three-way comparison and automatic conflict merging are outside what this version does. For three files, run the comparison twice. First version one against version two, then version two against version three. The two reports together tell you what each round of edits changed.

No. A merge appends what it is given and keeps every row, because deciding that two rows mean the same thing is judgment about your data, not about the file. Deduplicate in the result, or use the comparison to see which rows one file has and the other does not.

No, and that is the whole point of a standalone tool. Office does not have to be present on the machine that does the merging or the comparing, because the workbooks are parsed by the program itself. What you do need is something to open the result with, and a .csv opens in almost any spreadsheet or even a text editor.

Rate Spreadsheet Compare & Merge Tool for Excel - Combine Excel Files into One

  • Windows 7
  • Windows 8
  • Windows 10
  • Windows 11
Author: SoftOrbits (English)
Avg. rating: 4.5 from 852 votes
 Download for Free

Risk-free download

progressive-webapps/apis/offline-first Created with Sketch.
100% offline
Your files never leave your PC
Safe & secure download
Directly from the official website
No sign-up required
No account or email to get started
Trusted since 2006
Desktop software for Windows