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CSDiff FAQ

Q: How can I get CSDiff to appear/disappear from 'send to' or other menus ?

A: CSDiff's 'Settings' dialog lets you decide whether or not you want CSDiff to appear on the taskbar start menu, the 'send to' menu or as a desktop icon. This menu can be reached from the 'file' menu in the document comparison window.

Q: I tried to run CSDiff with MS-Office XP and it doesn't run

A: Currently, CSDiff is not compatible with MS-Office XP.
You may now CS-HTMLDiff to make comparisons of this type.

Q: I am comparing large files, and it seems like the program hangs

A: CSDiff has gone through major updates lately.
If you are still using CSDiff 3.0, then we recommend that you upgrade to version 4.0 which is greatly improved regarding performance.

Q: CSDiff tells me the files I am comparing are binary, but they aren't !

Binary files have various characteristics which might appear in non-binary files too, making CSDiff stop and give a warning stating that the files being compared are of this type.

These problems are usually one of the following:

Some programs use characters with binary code 0 for '.', '\n' or EOF.
Try to open the file in Notepad and resave.
File might contains foreign or problematic characters.
CSDiff supports standard ASCII and Unicode files and will give a error message if other characters are found. There is currently no solution to this problem.

Some files saved in NT4 have lines longer than 2048.
CSDiff currently supports line lengths up to 2048 characters. This will be improved in future releases of the program.

Q: I am running CSDiff from command line with the /q (quiet) feature, but screens are still being invoked

A: The /q parameter is meant to prevent windows from opening when running CSDiff.

However, this is only possible once an output file has been defined (either HTML or plain text). If no such file is defined, the output will be sent to a CSDiff window and the /q parameter will be ignored.

Q: When dragging files to the CSDiff icon, the filenames which appear are shortened to 8x3 characters (8 character filename and 3 character extension).

A: This is a setting on NTFS partitions in WinNT/2000/XP which is meant to improve performance. For information on how to change this setting, please see the following page at WinGuides.

Q: How do I use command line parameter /rF to compare statuses ?

A: Currently the 'F' option is used to filter alphanumeric fields, like filename and foldername. This option may not be used to filter comparison statuses.

The following is a sample using the F filter (can be run from the CSDiff folder):

csdiff /OtFile.txt /rC:0123S:0AF:file002,file004 "Base Folder" "New Folder"

This sample makes a folder comparsion between the two folders BaseFolder and NewFolder.
C:0123 - All columns are included except for 'Time'
S:0 - Sorted by column 1 (document name)
F:file002,file004 - Include files from those starting with 'file002' until those starting with 'file004'