A practical way to review a revised Excel budget

A revised budget arrives with “updated the numbers.” Before approving it, you need to know which hours, totals, and dates changed.

I make Diff Anything. In this worked example, two versions of a project budget have six changed cells across Budget and Timeline: development hours rise from 70 to 86, testing hours from 15 to 19, both totals increase, and the launch moves from 15 May to 29 May.

To review the revision:

1. Open the older Excel workbook on the left and the revision on the right.

2. Select an entry in Differences to jump to its sheet and cell.

3. Mark each change Reviewed as you check it, so you can see how much of the list you have covered.

For reports that have been sorted, choose a stable identifier such as an order number under Match rows by. That keeps records paired even when their row positions change. Between two XLSX workbooks, formula changes are compared too, even when the stored result stays the same. Recalculate and save both workbooks in your spreadsheet editor first if you need their latest calculated values.

Diff Anything runs locally on Mac and Windows. Your workbooks stay on your computer, with no AI involved.

The full six-cell example and a 1:32 video: https://martingruner.com/blog/compare-two-excel-files