Add XLSX spreadsheet compare/diff support

[AlexanderTheGrey]

This issue is unique.

• I have used the search tool and did not find an issue describing my idea.

Your idea.

Compare/diff is available for DOCX files, and it would be nice for this to also be a feature for XLSX spreadsheet files too. I've seen this discussed here:

https://community.onlyoffice.com/t/can-xlsx-be-compared/5317/9

There was a recent update a few months ago about how this feature is still being worked on. I don't know what the current status is, but I've personally used sq on the command line to diff XLSX files, and it works pretty well.

I wanted to post this tool suggestion here (sq), since it could make this feature easier to implement. I don't think sq can be used for style differences (only data). I believe LibreOffice Calc only supports data comparisons (for reference).

https://github.com/neilotoole/sq

The main downside to using sq manually is that you get either row or column diffs, without a more fine-grained diff (like seeing exact word comparisons within columns), so other tools would have to be added to the diff pipeline to achieve more elegant diffs.

[Dmitry-Kov]

Hello @AlexanderTheGrey,

I can confirm it's an enhancement 63250. When some fixes will be done I'll text you here in this issue.
Thank you for the report!

[AlexanderTheGrey]

@Dmitry-Kov Sounds good. If anyone needs to diff two spreadsheets in the meantime using the terminal, here is what I used:

Tools

https://github.com/neilotoole/sq
https://github.com/dandavison/delta

Commands

sq add '/path/to/old/spreadsheet' --handle @old_spreadsheet
sq add '/path/to/new/spreadsheet' --handle @new_spreadsheet

sq diff @old_spreadsheet.Sheet1 @new_spreadsheet.Sheet1 \
  --data --format yaml --stop 0 -U1 \
  | delta --side-by-side --line-numbers