Compare Word documents while ignoring formatting differences

I've got two very long Word documents. Unfortunately, some changes have been made in both documents.

Along with the changes in content, there have been some formatting changes. One of the documents is now completely reformatted - font size, line breaks, spacing, etc. But I don't care about these changes, it's just the difference in the content that I need.

Is there a way I can check the differences / compare the two documents without paying attention to the formatting?

(I'm currently using the compare tool in Word, but it's throwing up so many formatting changes it's hard to see where the content changes have been.)

Do your file compare as you do it now.  Then, on the “Review” tab, in the “Tracking” panel, click on the “Show Markup” button, and click on “Formatting” to deselect it:

The menu where you select the documents to compare has a button at the lower left labeled "More." Click on that to open a list of check boxes that control which aspects of the differences are tracked.