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"Word was unable to compare the documents." error message when you try to compare two Office Word 2007 documents

Symptoms

Assume that you have two Microsoft Office Word 2007 documents and these documents both have a table which contains more than 128 rows. When you try to compare the documents, the document compare operation takes a long time, and you receive the following error message:
Word was unable to compare the documents.

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Resolution

To resolve this issue, apply the following update:

2597961 Description of the Word 2007 hotfix package (Word-x-none.msp, Wordconv-x-none.msp): February 28, 2012

Registry information

Important This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
322756 How to back up and restore the registry in Windows
After you install the hotfix package, follow these steps to enable the hotfix:
  1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit in the Open box, and then click OK.
  2. Locate and then click the following registry subkey:
    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Word\Options
  3. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD (32-bit) value.
  4. Type DocCompareLargeTables, and then press ENTER.
  5. In the Details pane, right-click DocCompareLargeTables, and then click Modify.
  6. In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
  7. Exit Registry Editor.

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Status

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section.

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Keywords: kbqfe, kbsurveynew, kbexpertisebeginner, kb

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Article Info
Article ID : 2598005
Revision : 1
Created on : 1/7/2017
Published on : 2/28/2012
Exists online : False
Views : 152