Then, put the prepared shortcut into this folder.Īssuming the shortcut for the batch file VS_FileCompare.cmd is named "Compare2Files VS", you can select the two files, right-click and select Send To → Compare2Files VS to invoke the compare as shown below: Open the SendTo folder by entering shell:sendto into the file explorer's address bar (as described here).Create a shortcut "Compare2Files VS" for the batch file VS_FileCompare.cmd and copy it into the SendTo folder.It allows to use the context menu's Send To folder to compare the files. Here's an alternative how you can use the batch file VS_FileCompare.cmd mentioned in the section above. So you can compare multiple file pairs, but please ensure you have selected only two files at a time. In this case it will just open up a new window within the running instance of Visual Studio. Note: It does not harm if Visual Studio is already open.
Select two files to compare in the explorerĭrag and drop them as shown in the animation below:Īfter a few seconds (depending on the launch time of Visual Studio), the results will be shown in Visual Studio:
Save this code as VS_FileCompare.cmd to use it, and modify vspath if required to match the location of devenv.exe (depending on the Visual Studio version you're currently using, see footnote *) )Įither create a shortcut named "File Compare" for VS_FileCompare.cmd and place it on the desktop (as used in the animation below), so it is always available to drag & drop files onto it or directly place the batch file on the desktop. This is because I noticed that the file explorer passes the second file as the first parameter, and then the first file as the second parameter.
You might notice that I have reversed the %1 and %2 parameters in the batch. Start "Compare files" /B /MIN "%vspath%\devenv.exe" /diff %2 %1 First:'%2' Second:'%1' Set vspath=C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Enterprise\Common7\IDE
Visual Studio already has everything you need, and there are only some configuration steps required to make this working: File compare using drag & dropĬreate a new batch file using your favorite text editor. It only requires a little preparation which you need to do once and then it is useful like a Swiss army knife. Inspired by Vladimir Reshetnikov's answer above, I found a very comfortable way how you can instantly compare two files with Visual Studio by using drag and drop or via the "Send To" context menu.
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