Compare Sheets
Compare exactly the sheets you care about — even when they were renamed. Compare Sheets pairs worksheets across two workbooks, suggests matches with fuzzy name matching (so “Balance Sheet” lines up with “BS”), and lets you confirm, change, or drop any pairing before diffing only what you selected.
What it does
Where Compare Workbooks diffs whole files and pairs sheets by name, Compare Sheets lets you choose specific sheet pairs across two workbooks and compares only those. Crucially, a pair can join sheets with different names — the right tool when a sheet was renamed or reorganized between versions.
Where to find it
ModelXcel Pro tab → Compare group → dropdown → Compare Sheets.
Step by step
- Run the command. The cross-workbook sheet-selection dialog opens with the active workbook pre-filled as the first workbook.
- Choose the second workbook (open or from disk).
- ModelXcel Pro auto-matches the two workbooks’ sheets and presents suggested pairs, each with a confidence label. Review them: tick the pairs you want, adjust any mismatched pairing, and leave out the rest.
- Optionally adjust the comparison settings.
- A “Comparing Sheets” progress window runs, then the results window opens for just the pairs you chose.
How fuzzy sheet matching works
The auto-matcher pairs sheet names in four passes, taking the best match for each sheet and labelling its confidence so you can trust or override the suggestion:
| Pass | Matches when… | Label |
|---|---|---|
| Exact | names are identical (case-insensitive). | Exact Match (100%) |
| Normalized | names match after lowercasing, swapping “&”/“and”, stripping Sheet/Tab prefixes and leading numbers, and removing punctuation (so “01 - Cash Flow” matches “CashFlow”). | Normalized Match (95%) |
| Abbreviation | a short name is the initials of a multi-word name (“BS” ↔ “Balance Sheet”). | Abbreviation (85%) |
| Fuzzy | names are similar enough by edit distance (Levenshtein similarity ≥ 0.6). | Fuzzy (NN%) |
Pairs are assigned greedily, highest-confidence first, so each sheet is used once. Sheets in the first workbook with no match are listed as Unmatched; sheets only in the second are listed as Added. You always have the final say — the matcher only suggests; you confirm what actually gets compared.
Example: a renamed statement
Last quarter’s file calls a tab “P&L”; this quarter’s calls it “Income Statement”. In Compare Workbooks those would show as one removed and one added sheet. In Compare Sheets, the matcher proposes pairing them (or you pair them yourself), and you get a true cell-by-cell diff of the renamed statement.
Matching is a suggestion, not a guess you can’t see
Every suggested pair carries a confidence label, and nothing is compared until you confirm the selection. A low-confidence fuzzy match is easy to spot and drop; a renamed sheet you know about is easy to pair by hand.
Caveats
- Only the pairs you select are compared — sheets you leave unpaired are not diffed.
- Fuzzy matches can be wrong. Treat the confidence label as a prompt to verify, especially below an exact/normalized match.
- It detects differences, not correctness — see results.
Related
- Comparison results — what the engine compares and how results are presented.
- Compare Workbooks — diff whole files (sheets paired by name).
- Comparison settings — tolerance, scope, and alignment.