Find Added and Removed Items Between Two Lists

Put one item on each line, paste the old list on the left and the new list on the right, and keep Diff Algorithm on Line by Line. Lines marked - are in the old list only (removed), and lines marked + are in the new list only (added). Unmarked lines are in both.

Try it with this sample

1. Type Last week in the Original title box and paste this list below it:

   apple
   pear
   plum

2. Type This week in the Modified title box and paste:

   apple
   plum
   mango

3. Leave View Mode on Side by Side. The result updates by itself: Added 1, Removed 1, Unchanged 2. The left column shows - pear in red, the right column shows + mango in green.

If additions and removals look backwards, the lists are on the wrong sides. Click the swap icon (two arrows) at the top right of Comparison Settings.

Get the changes as plain text

Click the copy icon next to the swap icon. In Side by Side view the clipboard gets one line per item, with a marker in front:

[ ] apple
[-] pear
[ ] plum
[+] mango

Paste that into a note or spreadsheet and filter for [+] or [-] to get just the new or just the missing items. In Unified view the copy uses + and - prefixes instead.

A moved item counts as removed and added

The comparison keeps order. If an item only changed position, it still shows up twice. Here plum moved from last to first:

When order doesn’t matter (a guest list, a set of tags), sort both lists alphabetically in a spreadsheet or editor first, then compare. When order does matter (a ranking, a playlist), a -/+ pair with the same text means “moved”, not “new”.

Duplicates and near-matches

• Case: Acme and ACME are different lines. Tick Ignore Case if capitalization doesn’t matter for this list.
• Stray spaces: plum with a trailing space does not match plum. Ignore Whitespace ignores spaces at the start and end of each line and treats runs of spaces as one.
• Duplicates: an item listed twice in the new list is compared as two lines, so the second copy shows as added. If you only care about unique values, clean each list with Remove Duplicates first, and keep the originals.

If it doesn't work

• An empty added or removed line: one list ends with an extra line break. Delete the blank last line.
• Everything is marked changed: one list is comma-separated or on a single line. Put each item on its own line.
• Rows with several columns: a changed email in a customer row makes the whole row look removed and re-added. For records, compare by an ID column in a spreadsheet instead.

The comparison runs in your browser and the text is not uploaded. The tool does keep your last 20 comparisons in this browser’s History panel; click the trash icon there after comparing anything private. Open the free Text Diff tool.