Compare Two Files in Visual Studio

Today I had some files that I needed to compare. For years to compare two files in Windows I have relied upon WinMerge. But, I realized I had not used WinMerge in quite a long time and had not even installed it on my new box. Most of the time I just use SourceTree, as we are GIT shop, to do diffs now. To see version history of a single files different versions this works great.  (I realize there are MANY ways to do diffs.)

In this case though I needed to see the difference between the same file in two places in my project. Knowing that Visual Studio could handle this well but not remembering how to do it, I of course googled.

You can access Visual Studio’s built in diff tool via commandline in Windows or via the command window in VS. I choose the command window in VS.

Go to: View — Other Windows — CommandWindow

Then in the command window I ran the following command: 

It worked like a champ and shows me the diff without an extra install.

I found this information here.