Question of the Month

Dennis Snider

529 Posts

2k views

0

Question: How to remove duplicate cells in Excel?

Answer:
If you’re working with a large spreadsheet, the last thing you want to do is go through by hand checking every cell to see if you have duplicate values anywhere. If you’re using Microsoft Excel, you don’t have to do this; a handy time-saving feature makes it simple to hunt down those duplicates and eliminate them.

Firstly, you’ll want to find the duplicate values, which is a simple process: just highlight all the cells in which you want to search for duplicate values. Go to the home tab and select Conditional Formatting. A drop-down menu will appear, in which you should select Highlight Cells Rules> Duplicate Values. The program will highlight all the cells that contain a value duplicated elsewhere.

In order to eliminate these duplicate values, simply once again highlight all the cells from which you wish duplicate values to be removed and click on Data> Remove Duplicates. Check that Remove Duplicates window is showing the column you want to be cleaned and click okay to confirm. You will then be shown the results of your action, detailing the number of duplicates that have been deleted and the number of unique values remaining.