Merge Duplicate Files & Folders With WinMerge

By: Karan Goel | 6th July 2010

Earlier, I had shared 3 Free Apps to merge video files. Other than videos, you also might need to merge files and folders. Maybe you’ve had two common directories for a long time, and despite all efforts to keep them in sync, they no longer contain the same files. Or maybe you’ve been editing the same document in several locations, and you’re no longer sure which one is the most recent, and you don’t want to lose anything important in any one of the copies?

An Open Source application that offers that “diff” functionality to Windows users is a free duplicate files utility called WinMerge.

WinMerge is an Open Source differencing and merging tool for Windows. WinMerge can compare both folders and files, presenting differences in a visual text format that is easy to understand and handle.

WinMerge supports Microsoft Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008 and can handles Windows, Unix and Mac text file formats.

Have you ever had the need to compare or merge two duplicate files or folders? Have you ever tried the WinMerge duplicate files utility? Share your opinions and insight in the comments section below.