How to delete duplicate entries or rows in Excel?

There are 2 “clean” methods to solve this problem without moving the cells:

  1. Excel’s filter function allows the user to filter out rows that are duplicates.
  2. Countif to detect any duplicates for deletion


Solution 1:

  1. Click on the Data -> Advanced button
  2. Select “Filter the list, in-place”
  3. For “List Range”, select the data to be filtered, in this example, column A
  4. Check “Unique records only”
  5. Press OK. Only unique rows are selected
  6. Pick an empty column on the right (Column D in the example), type in anything on a unique row
  7. Copy and paste what you type till the last unique row.
  8. Highlight Column D and turn on the filter (In Excel 2010, its Data -> Filter  button)
  9. Select only to show blank cells
  10. Highlight and delete rows with blank cells
  11. Turn off the filter – only unique cells are remaining

 


Solution 2:

  1. Find an empty column, (Column D in this example), and type in the formula
    =countif([values to be sorted],[value]

    The countif function is used to count the number of times a certain value came up. If there is more than 1 match in the search area, it is a duplicate!
    In this example, it is =COUNTIF(A2:A$21,A2) Note that the 2nd row reference is locked (A$21), so that no additional data will be unintentionally selected. Do not lock the row reference 1st row reference, or it will not work properly.
  2. Copy the formula down to all rows to be filtered
  3. Turn on the filter on the column with the countif function
  4. Select all values not equal to 1
  5. Delete rows
  6. Turn off the filter – only unique cells are remaining

For reference, Microsoft did provide a similar solution to the problem. However, it involved copying data and deleting the original list. This seems a little more messy, because worksheets with a lot of cross referencing may have the formulas inadvertently altered. See link below:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/delete-duplicate-rows-from-a-list-in-excel-HA001034626.aspx

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>