Finding and Removing Duplicates in Excel

Did you ever come across a situation wherein, you see a lot of copied data or duplicates in excel and you don’t even remember copying it. Well, it happens with all of us at some point in time and finding and removing such copied data in your spreadsheet will take up a lot of time. So instead use the following tricks for finding and removing duplicates.

How to find duplicates in excel

1. 1. For finding the duplicates we shall be using the conditional formatting function. In our example below, we want to find if any name has been repeated. So first we shall select the Name column (A1:A15).

1. 1. Click on the conditional formatting option available at the right hand side of the home tab. Alternatively, you can also use shortcut key: Alt + H + L.

1. 1. When you click on the dropdown of conditional formatting, you shall receive various options. Select the first option ˜Highlight Cells Rules’ and the sub-option as ˜Duplicate Values.’

1. 1. You shall see a duplicate values dialog box, wherein you can select your formatting option. In our case, we select ˜Light Red Fill with Dark Red Text’.

1. 1. Click on OK and you shall see that the duplicate names have been highlighted in red color.

How to Remove Duplicates in Excel

1. 1. We shall use the same example as above for learning removal of duplicates. To remove the duplicates, select a random cell and select the option of Remove Duplicates from the data tab in the ribbon. You can also use the shortcut ALT + A + M

1. 1. After clicking on remove duplicates a dialog box shall appear of remove duplicates. It will automatically have your column headers, select the columns of which you want to remove the duplicate values. In our case we shall select all which means if the data in all three columns is duplicated then the rows shall be deleted. ( The blue ones won’t be deleted since the age is different)

1. 1. After pressing OK, all the duplicate values are removed, a pop up shall appear informing you about the duplicates removed and the unique values that remain. As mentioned above JKL remains since the age mentioned is different

1. 1. What if you want delete all values which have same name and gender irrespective of their age?? Well simple, in the 2nd step just unmark the age checkbox.

1. 1. After clicking on OK you will see that even the row with JKL as name has been deleted.

If you have any queries or suggestions then do mention it in the comments box below and we shall get back to you at the earliest.