The compare tool does not work, good diff tool for pdfs?

Hi @kevin_6057,

Hope you are doing well. Sorry for the trouble, and the delayed response.

In case you are still looking for a solution, you might want to check the below suggestion:

you can customize the comparison settings to suit your specific needs. Since you're dealing with engineering drawings where only positions have changed, the default comparison may flag everything as different. Here’s how to reduce the number of irrelevant changes:

1. After selecting the documents to compare, click on the Settings icon (a gear icon) in the Compare Files window.
2. In the settings, you will find several options:
   • Text and Images: By default, this compares all content, including images, text, and formatting. You can try unchecking Images if the changes are only in text and not visual elements.
   • Ignore Line and Object Positioning: This is the critical setting for your case. Ensure this box is checked to ignore shifts in content position and only focus on actual changes to the text or objects themselves. This can prevent the tool from flagging everything as changed simply because it's been moved.
   • Page Content: Make sure that you choose to compare the entire page content, not just text or images alone.

Once you’ve adjusted the settings, click OK and then Compare. Acrobat will analyze both PDFs and generate a comparison report. This report will show:

• The highlighted differences between the two versions.
• It will flag changes that are text-based or related to actual content alterations, rather than merely shifts in position.

After Acrobat finishes comparing the documents, you can inspect the results:

• Markups will be visible in the right panel, showing all detected differences.
• Acrobat will provide options to navigate between differences (next/previous), and you can click on specific changes to see details.

This should allow you to visually inspect whether only the positioning was adjusted and not the actual content.

Hope this helps.