To reach this options page, select View > Options... > Folder Comparisons
The controls on this page are used to configure the appearance and behaviour of the folder comparison window.
Show the changes column
Check this option to turn on the changes column in folder comparison windows. The column is used to display the number of differences between files when performing thorough comparisons between files.
Show the number of changed lines in changed files
Merge usually shows the number of blocks of changed, inserted, or removed lines in the Changes column. Check this option to show the total number of changed, inserted, and removed lines instead.
Check file timestamps and sizes
Check this option to only compare file sizes and last-modified timestamps when determining whether a file has changed. The number of changes between changed files is not calculated, so the Changes will show the value 1 rather than a complete count for changed files.
Check file content when timestamps or sizes are different
Check this option to have Merge always perform a thorough comparison between files to determine whether they have changed if the file sizes and/or last-modified timestamps are different. The Changes column will show the number of changes between the files.
Always check file content
Check this option to have Merge always perform a thorough comparison between files to determine whether they have changed. The Changes column will show the number of changes between the files, and Comparison Statistics and folder comparison reports will contain more detailed information than if only timestamps and file sizes are compared.
Compare byte-by-byte for files larger than # KB
When performing a thorough comparison between folder hierarchies, the Merge comparison engine may take a long time and use a large amount of memory when it encounters large binary files.
Check this option to make Merge perform more memory-efficient comparisons between files that exceed the size specified in the adjacent entry field. This option only has an effect when thorough comparisons have been enabled. Note that the algorithm used for byte-by-byte comparisons treats all differences between files as significant; it will not ignore differences in whitespace and line endings, even if you have those options turned on for normal comparisons.
For large files, this type of comparison is typically faster and uses considerably less memory than using the default comparison engine.
The Changes column in the folder comparison window will display a 1 or 0 result for byte-by-byte file comparisons depending on whether the files have changed or not.
Recurse into sub-folders
If this option is checked, Merge will recursively descend through any sub-folders when comparing two folder hierarchies. If the option is unchecked, only files in the top level of the two folders being compared will be displayed.
Include NTFS Streams
Check this option to include in the folder comparison results list all the NTFS data streams associated with each file.
Scan contents of excluded folders
If this option is checked, Merge will examine the contents of folders that have been excluded by the Filters options. This option can be useful if you are experimenting with different include/exclude patterns since the effect of changes to the patterns will be immediately visible in the folder comparison window.
Scan contents of excluded files
If this option is checked, Merge will examine the contents of files that have been excluded by the Filters options.