I have been asked that question almost in each project I am doing.

The answer is very simple: with SharePoint.

When I give this answer I get a curious look, and the following question will be: “Why?”

SharePoint is a huge product that does many wonderful things, in this post I like to show how it can help us manage our documents.

First thing that you will need to know is that when you create a Team Project you also create a SharePoint site, actually what you create is Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) site which is a free edition of SharePoint.

In each site you have a Documents Section that contains Document Libraries.

From the Team Explorer you have an interface to the Documents Section I will show how to use it in one of my future posts.

So how do I get to the site?

In order to get to the site you can just right click the Team Project and choose: “Show Project Portal…”, you can also get to it using its URL.

In the sites menu you will see the Documents Section, Click on it to get to the Documents Section.

Now you will get to the Document Section:

You can do the following and more in SharePoint:

• Create new Libraries
• Manage Security for libraries
• Manage Versioning for libraries
• Manage folders and documents in each library
• Upload documents
• Set template document for each library
• View history of each document
• Check-Out and Check-in documents
• Set Work space
• Alert On Changes
• Compare different versions of word documents

In this post I will show how you compare different versions of word documents.

I will start with creating the prerequisites for the example, uploading a document and creating versions for it:

Step 1: I have created a new Document Library called “Demo Doc”

Step 2: I have uploaded a document by clicking the “Upload”, browsed to it and checked it in as shown in the following pictures

Step 3: I have created history versions for the document

You can see that there are 3 versions 2 major versions (0.1 is a major version because it it starts from 0) and one minor version 0.2, now I will compare the latest version with version 0.2 and I will see what was changed.

Now we will make the documents comparison:

Step 1: Open the word document using word.

Step 2: Choose the “Review” tab.

Step 3: Open the “Compare” menu and choose “Specific Version…”

Step 4: Choose version 0.2

In the result page you can see the changes made since the chosen version up to the current version.

It is easy to see that only one line was added since the chosen version (Marked in Red), on the left hand you can see the details of each change and on the right hand you can see a version with the change (Current) and with out the change.

You can see that it is easy to compare between two different versions of a document, SharePoint gives a very strong tools that will satisfy all you need for documents management.

Have Fun!!!