Verify stored values after a spreadsheet handoff or migration

The job to be done

Confirm the numbers survived the move to a new format.

Workbooks change format as they pass between people and tools. A budget built in Excel is opened in Numbers, a partner saves it as ODS, or an old XLS file is brought forward to XLSX. Any step can drop a sheet, empty a cell, or alter a value, and checking by eye stops working after a few dozen rows.

Diff Anything reads the stored cell values from both workbooks and pairs them by sheet name and cell address, even when one side is XLSX and the other is Numbers or ODS. Neither file is converted first, and every changed cell is highlighted in a grid for its sheet.

Recommended path

Check a converted workbook against its source.

Keep the original workbook on the left and the migrated or returned copy on the right.

1. Open the two workbooks

   Choose any pairing of XLS, XLSX, XLSM, XLSB, ODS, and Numbers files, or a CSV export and its workbook. Auto opens them in PDF / Office mode, and a badge above the grid names both formats, for example XLSX ↔ NUMBERS.

2. Work through the sheets

   Use the Sheet menu to move between sheets. A sheet that was renamed or left out of the new file has content on one side only, so a missing tab is easy to spot.

3. Step through the changed cells

   Each changed cell has an entry in the Differences pane. Selecting one scrolls the Table view to that cell; Values as text shows the same result as one line per cell, such as B12=1450.

4. Record your decisions

   Mark each difference Reviewed or Ignored and add a review note, for example to explain a figure that was corrected on purpose. The Pending review filter shows the cells nobody has checked yet.

5. Confirm an untouched copy when needed

   If a file was only meant to be forwarded, choose Binary / Image mode; a matching SHA-256 hash shows the files are byte-for-byte the same.

Capabilities involved

What each capability contributes to a handoff check.

Limits to know

What a clean result tells you.

The comparison covers stored values only. Formulas, formatting, charts, macros, and layout are outside it, as a warning in the app states, and a formula cell is compared by the value saved in the file.

Cells are matched by address. Inserting a row or column moves every later value to a new address, so those cells are reported as changed even though the data only shifted.

Values are compared as each format stores them, not as they are displayed. Dates are worth checking: Excel files store them as serial numbers and ODS files as ISO dates, so the same date can be listed as changed between those two formats.

A CSV or TSV export can be compared with one sheet of a workbook, the first by default, but its values are compared as stored text, so 20 and 20.0 or two spellings of a date count as different. Free compares workbooks up to 5 MB each, 10 comparisons a day, and Pro removes the file-size limit.

Related manual

Compare folders, spreadsheets, documents, and images

Review cross-format spreadsheet values, release trees, documents, and visual assets with purpose-built navigation, safety checks, and rollback.

Its sections cover prepare folder sources, compare large trees, synchronize with a plan and an undo path, compare spreadsheets and documents, use visual image tools. Use it when you are ready to reproduce this workflow with your own project data.

Direct answers

Questions about this use case.