How to remove duplicates in excel

Find and remove duplicates

Excel for Microsoft 365 Excel 2021 Excel 2019 Excel 2016 Excel 2013 Excel 2010 Excel 2007 Excel Starter 2010 More…Less

Sometimes duplicate data is useful, sometimes it just makes it harder to understand your data. Use conditional formatting to find and highlight duplicate data. That way you can review the duplicates and decide if you want to remove them.

  1. Select the cells you want to check for duplicates.

    Note: Excel can’t highlight duplicates in the Values area of a PivotTable report.

  2. Click Home > Conditional Formatting > Highlight Cells Rules > Duplicate Values.

    Remove Duplicates 1

  3. In the box next to values with, pick the formatting you want to apply to the duplicate values, and then click OK.

    Remove Duplicates 2​​​​​​​

Remove duplicate values

When you use the Remove Duplicates feature, the duplicate data will be permanently deleted. Before you delete the duplicates, it’s a good idea to copy the original data to another worksheet so you don’t accidentally lose any information.

  1. Select the range of cells that has duplicate values you want to remove.

  2. Click Data > Remove Duplicates, and then Under Columns, check or uncheck the columns where you want to remove the duplicates.

    Remove Duplicates 3

    For example, in this worksheet, the January column has price information I want to keep.

    Duplicate values highlighted

    So, I unchecked January in the Remove Duplicates box.

    Remove Duplicates 5

  3. Click OK.

Note: The counts of duplicate and unique values given after removal may include empty cells, spaces, etc. 

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Duplicate data is costly, it skews reports and leads to wasted marketing resources. Here’s how to remove duplicates in Excel spreadsheets:

Marketer analyzing duplicate data on Excel

  1. Select the cells you wish to remove duplicates from.
  2. Click on the “Data” tab at the top.
  3. Click “Remove Duplicates” to reveal a pop-up.
  4. Uncheck any columns with data you want to keep.
  5. Click OK to delete the duplicates.

Download 10 Excel Templates for Marketers [Free Kit]

Let’s run through it with an example!

Note: If you want to see duplicate data before removing them, scroll down to learn how to find and highlight duplicates in Excel. Also, make a copy of your worksheet so you still have your original data if you delete something important.

How to Remove Duplicates in Excel

1. Select the cells you wish to remove duplicates from.

Click on a cell and hold down the left mouse button. Then drag the cursor over the other cells you want to select.

How to Remove Duplicates in Excel: to remove duplicates in excel, select all the cells you want

Or, use the Shift + arrow keyboard shortcut to select the range you want.

2. Click on the “Data” tab at the top.

click on dataHow to Remove Duplicates in Excel: t, step 2 to remove duplicates in excel

3. Click “Remove Duplicates” to reveal a pop-up.

How to Remove Duplicates in Excel: tstep 3 to remove duplicates in excel, click on "remove duplicates"You should see a pop-up that looks like this:

How to Remove Duplicates in Excel: ta popup to remove duplicates in excel

4. Uncheck any columns with data you want to keep. 

How to Remove Duplicates in Excel: tuncheck colums with data you don't want to delete in excel

5. Click OK to delete the duplicates.

How to Remove Duplicates in Excel: tclick ok to delete duplicates

Excel will keep the first occurrence of the value by default.

How to Highlight Duplicates in Excel

Sometimes, you want to see the duplicate data before you delete it. Here’s how to find duplicate data in Excel:

1. Select the cells you wish to check for duplicates.

Click on a cell and hold down the left mouse button. Then drag the cursor over the other cells you want to select.

How to Highlight Duplicates in Excelto highlight duplicates in excel, select all the cells you want

Or, use the Shift + arrow keyboard shortcut to select the range you want.

2. Click “Conditional Formatting” from the home tab to reveal a drop-down.

First, navigate to the home tab if you’re on a different tab.

How to Highlight Duplicates in Excelclick conditional formatting to find duplicates in excel

Click on “Conditional Formatting” to reveal a dropdown.

click on Conditional Formatting to find duplicates in excel

3. Hover over “Highlight Cell Rules”

How to Highlight Duplicates in Excelhover over highligh cell rules to find duplicates in excel

4. Choose “Duplicate Values” from the options.

choose duplicate values to highlight duplicate values

5. Pick the formatting option you want and click OK.

How to Highlight Duplicates in Excelchoose the formatting style you want to highlight your duplicate excel data with

You’ll find all duplicates highlighted in the formatting style you choose.

Now you know how to find and remove duplicates in Excel! 

Want more Excel automation hacks? Excel templates are a good place to start. They come pre-formatted with formulas that help you automate projections and more.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in [Month Year] and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

excel marketing templates

This wikiHow teaches you how to remove duplicate entries from a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

  1. Image titled Remove Duplicates in Excel Step 1

    1

    Double-click your Excel document. This will open the spreadsheet in Excel.

    • You can also open an existing document from the «Recent» section of the Open tab.
  2. Image titled Remove Duplicates in Excel Step 2

    2

    Select your data group. To do so, click the top entry, hold down Shift, and click the bottom entry.

    • If you’re selecting multiple columns, click the top-left entry, then click the bottom-right entry while holding down Shift.
  3. Image titled Remove Duplicates in Excel Step 3

    3

    Click the Data tab. It’s a tab on the left side of the green ribbon at the top of the Excel window.

  4. Image titled Remove Duplicates in Excel Step 4

    4

    Click Remove Duplicates. This option is the «Data Tools» section of the Data toolbar near the top of the Excel window. A pop-up window will appear with the option of selecting or de-selecting columns.

  5. Image titled Remove Duplicates in Excel Step 5

    5

    Make sure each column you wish to edit is selected. You’ll see several column names (e.g., «Column A», «Column B») next to checkboxes; clicking a checkbox will de-select the column in question.

    • By default, all columns next to the one you select will be listed and checked here.
    • You can click Select All to select all of the columns listed.
  6. Image titled Remove Duplicates in Excel Step 6

    6

    Click OK. Doing so will remove any duplicates from your Excel spreadsheet selection.

    • If no duplicates are reported when you know there are duplicates, try selecting one column at a time.
  1. Image titled Remove Duplicates in Excel Step 7

    1

    Double-click your Excel document. This will open the spreadsheet in Excel, allowing you to check it for cells containing duplicate values by using the Conditional Formatting feature. If you want to look for duplicates but don’t want to delete them by default, this is a good way of doing so.

    • You can also open an existing document from the «Recent» section of the Open tab.
  2. Image titled Remove Duplicates in Excel Step 8

    2

    Click the top-left cell in your data group. Doing so will select it.

    • Exclude headers (e.g., «Date», «Time», etc.) from your selection.
    • If you’re just selecting one row, click the left-most entry.
    • If you’re just selecting one column, click the top-most entry.
  3. Image titled Remove Duplicates in Excel Step 9

    3

    Hold down Shift and click the bottom-right cell. This will select any data between the top-left corner and the bottom-right corner of the data group.

    • If you’re selecting one row, just click the right-most cell with data in it.
    • If you’re selecting one column, just click the bottom-most entry with data in it.
  4. Image titled Remove Duplicates in Excel Step 10

    4

    Click Conditional Formatting. It’s in the «Styles» section of the Home tab. Doing so will prompt a drop-down menu.

    • You may first need to click Home near the top of the Excel window to view this option.
  5. Image titled Remove Duplicates in Excel Step 11

    5

    Select Highlight Cells Rules. You’ll see a window pop out from here.

  6. Image titled Remove Duplicates in Excel Step 12

    6

    Click Duplicate Values. It’s at the bottom of the pop-out menu. Clicking this option will select all duplicate values in your selected range.

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About this article

Article SummaryX

1. Open the Excel document.
2. Select your data group.
3. Click Data.
4. Click Remove Duplicates.
5. Click OK.

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Excel spreadsheets continue to represent a key tool for data storage and visualization. Functionalities such as Find & Replace or Sort help users speed up repetitive tasks that would otherwise be time-consuming and inefficient. Just like working on a spreadsheet with blank rows or cells that interfere with the correct application of rules and formulae, duplicate data can cause similar issues.

In this post, you will learn different ways to find duplicate values to either highlight this information or delete as many duplicates as needed. From more basic highlighting features to more advanced filtering options, you’ll learn how to work with the full potential of the desktop version of Excel.

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How to find and remove duplicate rows in Excel?

The various methods shown in this article will first find the duplicate values to be removed and then show how to delete them. This two-step process is crucial, especially considering that you may not want to delete the duplicates automatically and keep only the unique value. Let’s look at the first method to remove all duplicates.

How to Check for Duplicates in Excel?

How to remove duplicates using the Remove Duplicates feature?

What is the shortcut to removing duplicates in Excel? The shortcut is actually a built-in command available in the ribbon, which you can use in the following way.

  1. 1. Open your Excel spreadsheet and select any range in your spreadsheet which you want to delete duplicate rows from.

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel find duplicate rows

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel — Find duplicate rows

  1. 2. Go to Data > Remove duplicates.

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel remove duplicates

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel — Remove duplicates

If you haven’t selected all data in your spreadsheet, Excel will give you the option of expanding the search to the entire document, which is recommended. Click “OK”.

  1. 3. In case your data selection has headers, tick the column boxes that contain them so as not to be counted in the duplicate search. All columns in my example contain headers, so I’ll leave all boxes ticked. Click “OK”.

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel remove headers from duplicate search

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel — Remove headers from duplicate search

  1. 4. Excel prompts you with a dialog box informing you about the exact number of duplicate values it found and removed, as well as the number of unique values remaining in your spreadsheet.

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel duplicate values found

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel — Duplicate values found

How to Combine Multiple Excel Columns Into One?

There are many ways to combine multiple columns into a single column in Excel. Here’s how to do it without losing any data

READ MORE

How to Combine Multiple Excel Columns Into One

How to delete duplicates in Excel but keep one?

Although the previous method is helpful at targeting all duplicates, this means that the unique data will also be permanently deleted. To avoid this, you may want to explore the following methods.

Here’s how to delete duplicates in Excel but keep one; we strongly recommend that you always keep a copy spreadsheet in case you want to go back to the original dataset.

How to remove duplicates using the Advanced Filter option?

This is a straightforward way to get rid of any duplicate content without deleting them entirely; instead, the Advanced filter option hides your duplicates from your dataset.

  1. 1. Select a cell in your dataset and go to Data > Advanced filter to the far right.

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel Advanced filter

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel — Advanced filter

  1. 2. Choose to “Filter the list, in-place” or “Copy to another location”. The first option will hide any row containing duplicates, while the second will make a copy of the data.

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel Filter list

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel — Filter list

Leave the “List range” field empty, if you want Excel to list it automatically. You can also leave the “Criteria range” empty. The only mandatory field to fill out is the “Copy to” if you selected the “Copy to another location” option.

  1. 3. Tick the “Unique records only” box to keep the unique values, and then “OK” to remove all duplicates.

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel how to keep unique values

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel — How to keep unique values

Advanced filters are an excellent way to remove duplicate values while keeping a copy of the original data. Don’t forget that the Advanced filter option only applies to the entire table.

How to remove duplicates using Excel formulae?

Although you can combine various formulae to remove duplicates in Excel, in 2018, Microsoft integrated the UNIQUE formula to make this process much easier. First, let’s explore the syntax of the UNIQUE formula:

=UNIQUE (array, [by_col], [exactly_once])
  • array refers to the range of cells we will extract unique values from and represents the only required argument.
  • [by_col] is an optional parameter determining the search for unique values by rows or columns.
  • [exactly_once] is the other optional parameter and sets the behavior for values that appear more than once. If you want the formula to return items that appear exactly once, then write “TRUE”; however, if you want it to return every distinct item, then write “FALSE”.

Let’s now apply the =UNIQUE formula to our dataset.

  1. 1. Enter the formula next to the set of data. You can either leave one column in between or place it directly next to the last data column. Like in most Excel formulae, as soon as you type at the beginning of the formula, the rest will prompt automatically. Select the range you want to apply the formula to.

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel UNIQUE formula

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel — UNIQUE formula

  1. 2. You can leave the second parameter [by_col] by simply including the comma before and after its place. Let’s first see what happens when we include “TRUE” for the [exactly_once] parameter.

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel UNIQUE function

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel — UNIQUE function

  1. 3. As soon as you press the Return key, Excel removes all duplicates. In this example, it has removed rows 5 and 6.

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel TRUE UNIQUE formula

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel — TRUE UNIQUE formula

Let’s see how by including “FALSE” as the last parameter, Excel will keep the unique value.

  1. 1. Follow the previous steps, and now wrote “FALSE”, to return every distinct value.

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel FALSE UNIQUE formula

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel — FALSE UNIQUE formula

  1. 2. Now, the UNIQUE formula has returned row 5 and only deleted the duplicate value in row 6.

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel FALSE UNIQUE formula return

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel — FALSE UNIQUE formula return

How to remove duplicates using conditional formatting?

Conditional formatting is an Excel feature that helps users filter, sort, and organize data according to built-in rules or custom ones created by the user. The most common feature is the “Highlight Cell Rules”, which allows you to format cell values according to color, font, and various other format styles. Although this method won’t directly remove duplicates, it will make them extremely clear to identify.

  1. 1. Select the range of cells you want to apply the conditional formatting rule to. Then go to Home > Conditional Formatting > Highlight Cell Rules > Duplicate Values.

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel Conditional formatting

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel — Conditional formatting

  1. 2. Set the “Style” to “Classic” and then “Format only unique or duplicate values”. Don’t forget to leave the drop-down menu to “duplicate”. Finally, choose the formatting style using the “Format with” drop-down menu. Click “OK”.

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel Conditional formatting remove duplicates

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel — Conditional formatting remove duplicates

  1. 3. You can see how Excel highlights all duplicate values, including the cells. This means that you will need to make sure to only remove rows unless you are actually interested in removing all duplicates.

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel highlight duplicates conditional formatting

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel — Highlight duplicates conditional formatting]

In case you want to highlight rows, you can combine all row values in one cell using the =CONCAT formula; if you would like to learn more about this function, read this article on the Microsoft support page.

How to remove duplicates based on one or more columns in Excel?

As a more advanced use of Excel, you can remove duplicates based on one or more columns using Power Query. This feature allows you to select the columns you would like to remove the duplicates from. Let’s explore how to use Power Query to remove duplicates based on one or more columns.

  1. 1. Go to Data > Get Data (Power Query).

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel Power Query

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel — Power Query

  1. 2. Choose “Excel workbook” as your data source.

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel Power Query data source

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel — Power Query data source

  1. 3. Browse through your files and select the spreadsheet you want to apply the Power Query function to. Click “Next”.

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel Power Query load data

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel — Power Query load data

  1. 4. Tick the checkbox next to the worksheet containing your data (located in the left-side menu). Then, click “Load” in the bottom right-hand corner.

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel Power Query load data 2

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel — Power Query load data

  1. 5. As you can see, the dataset has been transformed into a table.

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel Power Query table

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel — Power Query table

  1. 6. Select the columns to apply the Power Query to by pressing Ctrl/Cmd + click on the columns.

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel Power Query table 2

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel — Power Query table

  1. 7. To delete duplicates, simply click on “Remove Duplicates” in the “Data” tab. Then click “OK” in the pop-up dialog box.

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel Remove Duplicates 2

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel — Remove Duplicates

  1. 8. Excel will inform you about the number of duplicates removed and how many unique values remain.

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel Final Alert message

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel — Final Alert message

Don’t worry about removing all duplicates, since the dataset you worked on is a copy created by the Power Query function. However, if you want to keep unique values, follow the steps outlined in the sections on the Advanced Filter option or =UNIQUE formula in Excel.

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Conclusion

As we have seen, there are many ways to identify and eliminate duplicates in your data, depending on your needs. Not only can you now successfully organize your data correctly, but removing duplicates makes it easier to identify key patterns and create accurate reports, particularly when working with larger datasets.

This example teaches you how to remove duplicates in Excel.

1. Click any single cell inside the data set.

2. On the Data tab, in the Data Tools group, click Remove Duplicates.

Click Remove Duplicates

The following dialog box appears.

3. Leave all check boxes checked and click OK.

Remove Duplicates Dialog Box

Result. Excel removes all identical rows (blue) except for the first identical row found (yellow).

Remove Duplicates Example Remove Duplicates Result

To remove rows with the same values in certain columns, execute the following steps.

4. For example, remove rows with the same Last Name and Country.

5. Check Last Name and Country and click OK.

Select Columns

Result. Excel removes all rows with the same Last Name and Country (blue) except for the first instances found (yellow).

Remove Duplicates Example Remove Duplicates Result

Let’s take a look at one more cool Excel feature that removes duplicates. You can use the Advanced Filter to extract unique rows (or unique values in a column).

6. On the Data tab, in the Sort & Filter group, click Advanced.

Click Advanced

The Advanced Filter dialog box appears.

7. Click Copy to another location.

8. Click in the List range box and select the range A1:A17 (see images below).

9. Click in the Copy to box and select cell F1 (see images below).

10. Check Unique records only.

Unique Records Only

11. Click OK.

Result. Excel removes all duplicate last names and sends the result to column F.

Unique Values

Note: at step 8, instead of selecting the range A1:A17, select the range A1:D17 to extract unique rows.

12. Finally, you can use conditional formatting in Excel to highlight duplicate values.

Duplicate Values

13. Or use conditional formatting in Excel to highlight duplicate rows.

Duplicate Rows

Tip: visit our page about finding duplicates to learn more about these tricks.

In this article, we will learn different ways to remove duplicates in Excel. Duplicates are a set of values that repeat in our data. We can remove them using 4 easy methods that will be explained below.

Different Ways To Remove Duplicates in Excel

  • Method 1: Using the Remove Duplicates Option on Data Tab
  • Method 2: Using the Advanced Filter Option
  • Method 3: Using Formulas
  • Method 4: Using the Power Query Tool to Remove Duplicates in Excel

Method 1. Using the Remove Duplicates Option on Data Tab 

To remove duplicate entries from our data table using the remove duplicates option on the Data tab, we have to follow some steps which are as follows:

Step 1. Select all the data

remove duplicates in excel

Step 2. Go to Data tab and click on the Remove Duplicates option

remove duplicates in excel formula

Step 3. Then a pop-up window will open and select the columns in which we want to remove duplicates and then click on OK

remove duplicates option in excelduplicates in excel

Step 4. And all the duplicates are removed

excel duplicate remove

Method 2. Using the Advanced Filter Option

 To remove duplicate entries from our data table using the Advanced Filter Option on the Data tab, we have to follow some steps:

Step 1. Select all the data

advanced filter excel

Step 2. Go to the Data tab and click on the Advanced filter option

advanced filter excel duplicates

Step 3. A pop-up window will appear on the window, and we have to check on Unique records only and click on OK

how to remove duplicates in excel

Step 4. And all the duplicates are removed:

how to remove duplicates in excel shortcut

Method 3. Using Formulas to Remove Duplicates in Excel

To remove duplicate entries from our data table using formulas, we have to first make a new column name combine to combine all the columns of our data. And then we apply the following steps:

Step 1. To combine all the columns, we use the combine operator &

=A2 & B2

remove duplicates in excel formula

Step 2. Make another column name count to count the no of duplicates of this entry using the COUNTIF function that takes the criteria and the cell that duplicates we want to count here C$2:C6 shows the range of the data in which we want to find duplicates and C2 is the cell that duplicates we want to count

=COUNTIFS(C$2:C6,C2)

formula to remove duplicates in excel

Step 3. Now we have the number of duplicate values, so we can apply Method 2 Using Remove Duplicates Option on Data Tab and remove duplicates. Follow the below steps

Step 4. Go to the Data tab and click on the Remove Duplicate option

excel remove duplicates formula

Step 5. A pop-up window will appear. Click on remove duplicate

excel remove duplicates

Step 6. Another pop-up window will appear, click on ok

shortcut to remove duplicates in excel

  • And all duplicates are removed

output dataset without duplicates

Method 4. Using the Power Query Tool

 To remove duplicate entries from our data table using Power Query Tool we have to follow some step which is following: And then we apply the following steps:

Step 1. Go to Data tab and click on From Table option

power query tool in excel

Step 2. A pop-up window will appear then check on My table has headers and click on OK

creating table

Step 3. Then the Power Query Editor opens

Power Query Editor

Step 4. Go to the Home tab and click on Remove rows and in this option click on Remove Duplicates

removing duplicates

Step 5. And all the duplicated values are deleted

output with deleted duplicate values

Now you know 4 easy ways to locate and eliminate duplicates in Excel

FAQs on How to Remove Duplicates in Excel

1. Can Excel automatically find duplicates?

In Excel, there is a predefined rule for highlighting duplicate cells. To apply this rule, follow the below-mentioned steps:

  • Select the data you want to check for duplicates.
  • On the Home tab, in the Styles group, click Conditional Formatting > Highlight Cells Rules > Duplicate Value

2. Why is Excel not finding all duplicates?

Trailing or leading spaces are perhaps the most frequent cause of Excel failing to recognize duplicates.

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How to Remove Duplicates in Excel (and Find Them)

How to Remove Duplicates in Excel (and Find Them)

In an Excel spreadsheet, you’d often have to collate data from multiple sources. Sometimes from external sources (like webpages) too 🖨

And this might result in duplicates in your Excel sheet. So how can you remove them? By scanning your worksheet for dupes manually?

Nah! That’s not going to work if you have a large dataset. Let’s think of a smarter solution 🧠

To find and remove duplicate values in Excel, you can use the Remove Duplicate tool of Excel (and some other easy ways too). To learn how, dive straight into the guide below.

Practice along with the guide by downloading our sample workbook here 📩

How to remove duplicates in excel

We will look into multiple methods of removing duplicates in Excel. Which one’s the best? I leave that to you 😅

So, here’s the list of names that have many instances of duplication.

List of names

We need to remove the duplicate values from this list.

Here are different methods that can help you do this✂

Advanced Filter

To remove duplicates values from your data using the advanced filters:

  1. Select the data that needs to be filtered.
Selection of data
  1. Go to the Data Tab > Advanced Filters.
Advanced filters

This opens up the Advanced Filter dialog box as follows 👀

The advanced filter dialog box

The list range is already selected (that’s because we selected the data to be filtered before launching the advanced filter) 👌

Pro Tip!

Under the box Action:

 The Action Box to find duplicate rows
  • Select Filter the list, in place if you want the original dataset to be de-duped.
  • Select copy to another location if you don’t want to disturb the original data. This way Excel will ask you for a location (a cell range basically) where you want to create a copy of the source data. Duplicates will then be deleted from this copied set of data and your original data will remain the same.
  1. Check the option for Unique Records only. This tells Excel to delete any dupes from the dataset.
Advanced Filter popup box
  1. Click Okay.

Here comes the data which no longer has duplicates 🤩

Deduped dataset

Note that we had selected the option to Filter in place so our original dataset has changed.

Kasper Langmann, Microsoft Office Specialist

Remove Duplicates

Do you know Excel has an in-built feature for removing duplicates? We will explore that now 🔎

So with the same list of names, here we go:

  1. Select the column header for the column that contains the duplicate values (List of Names in our example).
Selection of the column header
  1. Go to the Data Tab > Remove Duplicates.
Remove duplicats feature
  1. Select the column from where the duplicates are to be removed. Note that it is already selected in our case.
  2. Check the box for “My data has headers” as highlighted below.
Duplicate records removal
  1. Click Okay.

Excel brings you a dialog box that tells how many duplicate values have been found and removed. And how many unique values are retained. This way you can remove duplicates from each column of your dataset 🚀

Duplicate values dialog box

Here is the deduped list. Excel has found and removed all instances of duplication 💪

 List of unique values

UNIQUE function

Another way how you can extract unique (or other than duplicate values) from a dataset is by using the UNIQUE function.

The UNIQUE function extracts a list of unique values from a given set of values 📝

Must know that the UNIQUE function is a dynamic array function. It returns an array of unique values 📌

And as it is a dynamic array function, it is only available in the dynamic versions of Excel. Starting from Excel 2021 to Microsoft 365 only. The older (non-dynamic versions) of Excel do not support dynamic array functions.

Kasper Langmann, Microsoft Office Specialist

So to extract a list of unique names from our dataset:

  1. Begin writing the UNIQUE function as follows ✍

= UNIQUE

Writing the UNIQUE function
  1. Specify the range that needs to be filtered.

= UNIQUE (A2:A8)

Specifying the range

We want to remove dupes from the list of names i.e. Cell A2 to Cell A8. So we are creating a reference to these cells.

  1. Hit Enter, and there are your filtered values.
UNIQUE function returns unique values

Pro Tip!

Instead of an array of unique values, did the UNIQUE function return the #SPILL error 🥴

That’s because your spill range is not empty (some cells might already have values). The spill range is the cell range (to the bottom or right of the active cell) where the UNIQUE function will populate the array of unique values.

How to find duplicates in excel

You’d enjoy the process of finding duplicates in Excel. Make sure you’re there with us till the end of it 🚴‍♀️

Continuing with the same list of names from our previous example.

Find duplicate values in Excel

This time we only need to find out the duplicate values from this list, so here we go.

  1. Select the data (from where you want to find the duplicates).
Selection of data
  1. Go to the Home Tab > Conditional Formatting.
Home Tab > Conditional Formatting
  1. From the drop-down menu that appears, select Highlight Cell Rules > Duplicate values 🎨
Highlight duplicate values

This way the conditional formatting tool of Excel will highlight duplicates from the selected dataset.

Like in the image below.

Highlight Duplicate rows

We have all the duplicate data highlighted from our dataset above.

However, all the values are still mixed. Do you want to separate the duplicate values?

Do it through the steps below 👇

  1. Select the header for the subject column (List of Names in our example).
  2. Go to the Data tab > Filter.
Filter option to filter out duplicate rows

Once the filters are applied, you’d see the filter icon (drop-down menu icon) inside the selected column header.

  1. Click on that drop-down menu icon 🔽
  2. From the context menu that opens up, select Sort by Color > Red.
Sort by color

And we have the highlighted values (duplicate values) filtered only.

Remove duplicate rows

You now may choose to cut/paste them, delete them or treat them in any way you like 🙈

That’s it – Now what?

The above article is a complete guide on how to find and remove duplicates in Excel. Like reading it?

If you did, you’d be amazed to know how versatile Microsoft Excel is. And the best part of Excel is that it has a huge (and that’s an emphasized huge) library of functions 📚

Each function of Excel is super smart and useful when used the right way. To master Excel functions, you must have a good grip on some core functions of Excel.

These include the VLOOKUP, SUMIF, and IF functions. To learn them, enroll in my 30-minute free email course now. It covers these (and many more) Excel functions, features, and tools.

Frequently asked questions

To delete duplicates from any dataset in Excel.

  1. Select the column header for the column that contains the duplicate values.
  2. Go to the Data Tab > Remove Duplicates.
  3. Under the Remove Duplicate dialog box, select the subject column.
  4. Check the box for “My data has headers” if the column has any.
  5. Click “Okay”.

To quickly delete duplicates, use the in-built tool for duplicate removal in Excel as below:

  1. Select the column header for the column that contains the duplicate values.
  2. Go to the Data Tab > Remove Duplicates.
  3. Under the Remove Duplicate dialog box, select the subject column.

Check the box for “My data has headers” if the column has any and click “OK”.

Kasper Langmann2023-01-21T18:45:48+00:00

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