Excel has many applications, like keeping track of inventory, maintaining a mailing list, making sales reports, and many others.

As the database grows, one main issue many users encounter is getting duplicate values and rows. This can make your calculations inaccurate and will make people question your competency.

You could end up giving a summary report with duplicate values or even mailing a letter to the same person twice. So you’ll need to find and remove the duplicates to avoid these small mistakes that could have serious implications.

Option 1: Using the remove duplicate tool

Since this problem happens a lot, there is a dedicated command on a ribbon that makes it easy to deal with duplicates. This is the case with recent versions of Microsoft Office suite, such as excel 2007 up to 2016.

Select the table you’ll work on

First, you need to select the cells that are targeted, as the tool can be used to remove duplicates in entire rows or partially matching records.

You can do this by selecting the table and then pressing Ctrl + A. You should make sure the original file is saved as the process deletes the dupes permanently.

Click on the data tab at the top of the screen

Once you have selected the range, check the top of the screen and click the data tab. The different commands will be shown, and you should then check for ‘remove duplicates’ and click on it.

A small dialogue box will pop up on the screen. The first row is automatically selected as the ‘my data has header’ is ticked. If there is no header and the data starts at the 1st row, deselect that option.

Press the OK button to remove duplicates

The entire table is now selected, and thus you should go ahead and press the OK button. This will delete all duplicates. The deletion details appear on the screen with unique values remaining and the number of duplicate entries removed shown.

However, if you want to remove partial duplicates based on specific columns, you should select them, leaving the rest. If the table contains many columns, it is best to unselect all and then just select those that need dupes removal.

Once done, you should click OK. Then the duplicated information will be removed, and the details will be shown on the screen.

#excel