Once you’ve selected both folders that you want to compare, ensure that both “Read-only” checkboxes are ticked. When you’ve selected the first folder, repeat the process for the second folder below it. If you only select but don’t enter the folder you want to compare, the browse window will enter the folder for you. Within the browse window, you need to enter the folder you want to compare, then click “Open”. Click Browse to select which folder you want to compare. Use the browse feature to select a folder that you want to compare.

To select a folder, click “Browse…” on the far right just under the “1 st File or Folder” bar. Once WinMerge is open, press the Control+O hotkey combo to open a new comparison. Once the installation has completed, you’ll see a short message from the developers, click “Next” to skip it, then click “Finish” to close the installer and launch WinMerge. The final page just shows what options you’ve selected, so double-check them, then hit “Install” to begin the installation process. Once you’ve selected which features you want to enable, click “Next” to continue. Other options include creating a desktop shortcut and adding WinMerge to your system path, which you can leave disabled. Here, there are checkboxes to enable File Explorer context menu integration, which allows you to launch WinMerge from the right-click menu File Explorer. Once you’ve selected the features you want, click “Next” to continue. Leave all the plugins enabled and select a language pack if you want one. If you want to install an extra language pack, you can select one or more of the many options in the language list at the bottom. By default, all extensions are enabled and there’s no real reason to turn them off – leave these options as they are. The second page allows you to configure which features to install. The first page of the installer is the licence agreement, click “Next” to agree and continue. Once the installer is downloaded, double-click it to start the installation wizard. You can install WinMerge for free from their website here. Just click the green “Download Now!” button in the top right corner to download it from SourceForge. This guide will walk you through installing and using WinMerge to compare the files in two folders. You can see if there are any missing files or if any of the backed-up files are different from the originals. WinMerge is a tool that allows you to compare the contents of two directories.

If this sort of copy failure happens to an important document, and you don’t notice, you could end up with data loss.

Winmerge compare file names only