Compare two lists

Compare two lists to see which items they have in common and which appear in only one of them. This view makes it easy to check two exports, two inventories or two reference lists against each other.

Paste one value per line into each of the two fields; empty lines are ignored. The result is split into three groups: items found in both lists, only in the first and only in the second. Three settings are on by default: ignore letter case, trim spaces at the start and end of each line, and ignore duplicates. You can switch them off as needed, which decides whether the same word written differently counts as identical or distinct. The lists are not merged: the three columns show what is missing or repeated between two sources. Check empty values, spelling variants and any sensitive data before copying the results. Comparing lists answers three separate questions: what appears in both sources, what is missing from the second and what exists only in the second? This split helps when checking successive exports, reconciling inventories or preparing an update. Before comparing, decide whether letter case and leading or trailing spaces should matter. For ordinary names, ignoring case avoids artificial differences; for technical identifiers, it can hide a real distinction. Duplicates need the same care: a set comparison does not tell you how many times a value occurs in each source. If frequency matters, use a value counter. Typos and synonyms are never matched automatically. Finally, look at a few values that appear in only one list: they may be legitimate additions, expected removals or just spelling variants. When a reference appears only in the second list, it has not necessarily been added recently: the two sources may cover different scopes. Note when and with which filters each list was extracted before drawing conclusions. A reliable comparison starts with two lists that are genuinely comparable.