Team Foundation Server (TFS) File Difference viewer - customize with other tool

I am using Team Foundation Server (TFS) for Visual Studio 2005.

Whenever i wish to compare two file's versions TFS displays a window with the differences.

The problem is that it is always split vertically.

In fact, almost every time, i would prefer to have it split horizontally. I've already looked at TFS options and googled but i found nothing. I'm appalled to think that such option is not available!

Is there any way to configure TFS to split it horizontally?

I've found the built in differencing tool in TFS woefully lacking so I set up WinMerge (http://www.winmerge.org/) in my environment in Tools -> Options -> Source COntrol -> Visual Studio Team Foundation.

A nice blog post exists below:

http://www.vitalygorn.com/blog/post/2007/12/Better-DiffMerge-tool-for-TFS.aspx

There is no ability to change the orientation of the built-in diff/merge utility. There are a lot of third-party tools (some free, some not) to choose from. Check out this post from James Manning where he tracks the correct command/argument values to use when configuring various tools for use by Team Foundation's compare and (content) merge operations.

This appears to be a more thorough description of how to use Winmerge in TFS- http://www.neovolve.com/post/2007/06/19/using-winmerge-with-tfs.aspx

Praveen Nayak

I have Visual Studio 2012 and I get to choose between side - by - side options and inline mode. With inline mode, the before and after appear one below the other so that I have the full window for editing.