Folder Compare Overview

A Folder Compare session compares two folder structures side-by-side, in a variation of the familiar Explorer style.  The comparison may be of folders on your hard drive or network, but either side also may be an FTP site, a zip archive, or a snapshot taken earlier.  All of these have a directory structure -- folders and subfolders containing files -- and Beyond Compare treats them equivalently.

The Folder Compare view uses color to highlight the differences between the two sides.  Select View > Legend to display a guide to the various folder icon color combinations.  See Understanding the Display for details.

A typical Folder Compare strategy is to:

The display aligns files and subfolders of the same name, left and right.  You can modify the alignment by defining alignment overrides in the session's Rules .  You can also align files regardless of what subfolder they are in by using the View > Ignore Folder Structure command.

You can click on a column header to sort by that column, or right-click the header to choose different columns to display.