Data Compare with different columns

[20151229User]

I have two TSVs that contain the following columns (in order):
File 1: A B D E F
File 2: A B C D E F

When doing a comparison, it can't handle the lack of columns in one file and it tries to match column D from File 1 with column C from File 2. In fact, it doesn't even seem to read the column names from both files. I understand the desire to optionally compare two files with different headers by position, but being able to do a column comparison by name seems important.

It would be great to be able to do all of the following:

• Selectable comparison by column name instead of position and maintain that alignment.
• Optionally ignore columns with no differences (i.e. in wide CSV/TSVs, just show me the columns that have changed)

This is with 3.3.13 built 18981

[Aaron]

Hello,

Thanks for writing in. Detecting this case and automatically aligning columns is on our wishlist, but is not currently supported in BC3 or BC4.

To manually align the columns, go to the Data Compare's Session menu -> Session Settings (or the toolbar button) and in the Columns tab, we have a table that represents the columns. An individual cell of the Left File column would represent A, B, D, etc. Then use the yellow arrows at the bottom to shift the cells so A aligns with A, B with B, and D with D, etc. Clicking Ok will return to the main view and update the comparison.