Compare two Word drafts before you trust the highlight
Practice on a known change
A highlight feels authoritative. It is only as good as the text the tool could read. Before you open a contract, use the sample pair on the compare page. One file says delivery in 10 days and mentions an invoice. The other says 15 days and a packing list. If you cannot find those changes in the highlight, you do not yet know how to read this tool, and you should not use it to approve a clause. The samples stay on your machine once downloaded. They are not your client’s draft, and the tool does not upload either.
Comparison reads body text. It does not list comments, headers, footers, or text boxes as their own review items. A change that lives only in a header will not glow. Read the header yourself. Files over 20 MB are refused. Very long text is not compared. Two documents that share little wording are reported as unlike, which is more honest than painting the whole page red. None of this writes a new .docx with Word’s tracked changes. You still edit the source yourself.
Read the numbers twice
Days, prices, and names are where a skim fails. The sample’s 10 and 15 are easy because you were told to look. In a real draft, write the differences down, then change the .docx in an editor. If you need one file that simply places the old appendix after a new cover, that is merge, which does not highlight anything. If you need a PDF of the revision, make it only after the .docx is the revision you meant, using Word to PDF, and remember the PDF may not be searchable. Keep both drafts until the other person agrees which one is current.
What a highlight is allowed to mean
A highlight on compare means the body text the preview could read is different between the two .docx files. It does not mean a lawyer has accepted the change, and it does not list comments. Read the words. In the sample, the delivery window moves from 10 days to 15 days and invoice becomes packing list. In your files, find the clause you would be sorry to miss and confirm it is the thing that changed. If the important edit is inside a text box, a header, or a comment, this page will not show it. Open Word for that part. The two files stay in the browser. There is no shared review link and no upload to an API. If you need a single document afterward, that is merge, which is a different job and will not tell you what changed. Keep both drafts until you have written down the change you intend to keep.
Quote the change
Write the change in your own note if someone else must approve it. The highlight disappears when you leave the page, and there is no link you can forward. A sentence you can quote is more useful than a screenshot of the whole draft. Keep both files until that sentence is agreed.