ged

ged

Ged, short for git excel diffing tool, is a tool used for diffing two excel workbooks.

Installation

Download the gedInstaller_<version number>.exe run the installer and then add ged to the system path. The default install location is C:\Program Files (x86)\ged.

Usage

Basic Usage

ged <excelfilename>.xlsx

This will generate a html file called <excelfilename>-diff.html that will show the differences between the local file and the one on the default branch. Open this diff.html file in a web browser and view the differences between the two excel files.

Bringing up the help menu

There are two ways to bring up the help menu typing ged by itself or ged -h

How it works

The "smart compare" works by using a unique primary key in each excel sheet. This key is either provided by the user or ged will try and find one by combining any number of columns together. If they key repeats or ged is not able to find a unique primary key then it will default to the basic diffing algorithm that finds the rows that don't exist or changed between the "mine" and "theirs" sheets and prints them out to the diff.