### Compare Inventories or Evaluations

You can compare inventories or evaluations from the same or different domains. Both objects must be of the same type—that is, two inventories or two evaluations. You cannot compare an inventory against an evaluation.

You can compare any two Evaluation Summaries. Comparing two Snapshot Evaluations is particularly useful, as a Snapshot Evaluation collects and evaluates all of the configuration data for the evaluated domain. Such a comparison enables you to see very quickly the differences between the configurations and their issues for those two domains.

To compare two Domain Inventories or Evaluation Summaries, do the following:

1. In the Navigation pane, open the Domain Explorer.

Click the Domain Explorer tab, or select Window > Show View > Domain Explorer.

2. Open the History folder containing the resources to be compared (Inventory History or Evaluation History).
3. Select the two files to be compared.

Click on the first item to select it, and then hold down the Ctrl key and click on the second item.

4. Right-click in the Domain Explorer and select Compare from the context menu.

Note: | The Compare option remains deactivated until two like items have been selected.

Selecting Compare opens the Text Compare display in the Document Pane. The differences between the two files are highlighted, and related segments are shown in boxed sections, with connectors indicating the relation.

The Text Compare navigation controls are as follows:

- Go to next/previous segment — Click the up/down arrows at the top right corner of the Text Compare display.
- Jump to a segment — Click on a segment bar in the far right column.
- Resize panels — Move your cursor over the center divider until the cursor changes to a double arrow. Then click and drag the divider to the left or right to resize the panels.
- Display Text Compare context menu — Right-click in the left or right Text Compare panel to display the Text Compare context menu. This menu has the following options:

- Copy — Copy the selected text. You can then use a text editor to paste the selected text into a file and save it.
- Select All — Select all text in the current panel. You can then use a text editor to paste the selected text into a file and save it.
- Ignore White Space — Remove white space characters in both panels.
- Show Whitespace Characters — Show white space characters and carriage returns in both panels. A light blue dot indicates a white space characters. A light blue paragraph symbol indicates a carriage return.
- Show Line Numbers — Display line numbers in both panels.
- Find/Replace — Display the Find/Replace dialog box. Enter your search criteria and click Find to search in the selected panel. Replace is disabled for this page.