I seem to have confusing results when doing a compare of 2 simple text files.
I am using Ultracompare ver 7.20.0.1009.
Below is how a difference is usually shown:

In the line below, the only difference is the .5 at the end.
The line is flagged as different, but when I hit the blue arrow to show where it occured in the line it didn't highlight anything. It was 286 characters long and it took me a while to find this. Any ideas why it does not highlight the 2 characters that are different?

There are several bugs in UltraCompare's difference display. I've submitted a bug report to IDM with several reproducible scenarios. I encourage you to email your example to IDM so that they can add it to the list.

It is possible that fixing the bugs I've already submitted will fix your issue as well, but we won't really know without a retest. I will try to remember to update this thread once my reported bugs are fixed so that you can retest your scenario as well.

I verified your observation with 2 text files containing long lines and only 2 differences at end of 2 different lines and you are right, the commands Next Difference Characters and Previous Difference Characters (blue left/right arrows) do not make a good job in this case when the wrong file has the focus. In my test case file 1 in left pane was the original file and file 2 in right pane was the modified file with the 2 inserted words at end of 2 different very long lines. The commands do not work good with cursor in file 1 in left pane, but work quite good with focus (cursor blinking) in file 2 on right pane. However, I have enabled synchronized vertical and horizontal scroll and that did definitely not work when executing one of these 2 commands.

In the meantime I suggest to enable Toggle Word-Wrap which I normally use when comparing text files with long lines which makes it easier to see the differences just by using the commands Next Difference and Previous Difference - the green up/down arrows.

Hi - the original post didn't seem at all related to scroll position of long lines so much as the highlighting just plain old not being applied in some specific comparison scenarios. Any news from you guys if this got any better in v8?

I have never seen a problem with highlighting differences. I could simply never reproduce bitmonger's problem with not highlighting differences. I could just see the problems I described in this topic as I tried to reproduce bitmonger's issue for verification.

UC 8.30.0.1004. I've been running a VERY old version (5.x) of UC for a number of years, but was able to persuade my employer to update both my UC and UE to current versions

I never had a problem before, but I noticed just now when I used it on my XP Pro machine, it was also not showing the differences in red. In fact, it wasn't showing ANY differences, zero, although I could clearly see a major difference right in the 3rd line or so of the 12 or 15 lines in each small file. I thought maybe I'd fubar'd my colors, as I'd been trying some of them, but nothing worked. I set them back to default, and despite a refresh, go, etc, this did not correct the problem either, still no compare. As a test, I created two small files in UE, and did a highlighted line compare. It worked, rather to my surprise. I tried my original two files, and it initially didn't work either, but then all of a sudden it did.

And now, after changing the color scheme again, I ran another 3-way text compare, and files 1 and 2 are still showing the default colors, and file 3 has my new ones. Refreshing made them all the same again, but when I exited and came back in again, same thing! 1 & 2 in default colors, 3 in my color. Weird.

While I'm glad it's working now, I'm quite mystified as to why it wasn't running a compare at all, and I'm hoping that it won't revert. Any ideas anyone?

TIA
elaine
charlottesville, va

Do you have uninstalled UC v5.xx before installing UC v8.30.0.1004?

And do you have also deleted manually all settings of UC v5.xx before installing currently newest version?

Usually, it is not necessary to uninstall a previous version on upgrade and deleting manually the entire configurations is most often not a good idea as you can imagine.

But the upgrade from UC v5.xx to v8.30 is a very large upgrade step. If one of the two questions must be answered with NO by you, I suggest to execute the following steps. But please note that these steps results in loosing all configurations already made for UC v8.30 too.

• Uninstall UC v8.30 via Control Panel - Add or Remove Programs (Windows XP) respectively Control Panel - Programs and Functions (Windows 7) best while having no connection to WWW as this prevents automatic deactivation of the license. You should restart Windows after uninstall as the shell extension DLL can't be removed if it was already loaded by Windows Explorer.
• Copy into address bar of Windows Explorer the path %APPDATA%\IDMComp\UltraCompare and open this directory with hitting key RETURN. Delete all files and subfolders in this directory except subfolder license if present at all.
• Start regedit.exe and delete in the tree the key TOOLSIDM in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software. This little key is from UC v5.xx and is no longer used by UC v8.30.
• Next delete in the registry tree under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\IDM Computer Solutions the key UltraCompare Pro 3. This registry key is also from UC v5.xx and no longer used by UC v8.30.
• And last I suggest to delete also registry key UltraCompare Pro also under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\IDM Computer Solutions to get rid off all settings from UC v8.30.
• Now install UC v8.30 again, then start UC and reconfigure UC again to your needs. You may see an error message on start of the installation if you are still not connected to WWW which you can simply ignore.

I hope that with this procedure the glitches perhaps caused from partly taking over the settings of old UC v5.xx will not occur again.