Identifying Duplicates
Have you ever had to combine a list of names from various sources and then wanted to remove duplicates to avoid double counting, etc.? How did you do it?
It would be an arduous task having to scan through each row and delete duplicates as you go along. What if your data was really big? Anything that is done manually, like finding and removing duplicates has risks involved. You could have missed an entry, delete what shouldn’t have been deleted, etc.
A much easier way and not to mention time-saver, is to use conditional formatting.
Conditional Formatting
Enables you to “easily spot trends and patterns in your data using bars, colours and icons to visually highlight important values.” - Microsoft Excel
I’ll cover more on Conditional Formatting in future posts.
Example
I have a list of names and notice there are some duplicates.
STEP 1
Highlight the column that I want to see duplicate names. In the HOME tab > Under "Styles" click "Conditional Formatting" > Highlight Cell Rules > Duplicate Values.
STEP 2
A message will pop up given you different options on how you want duplicate values to be identified, for example ‘light red fill with dark red text’, light yellow fill with dark yellow text’, etc.
I’ve left it as ‘light red fill with dark red text’. Click OK.
STEP 3
Now that I know which names are duplicated, to keep one of the duplicated names, e.g. “Kelvin Wilkerson”, I’ll leave the first cell (A2) with that name and delete all the others until cell A2 no longer has a light red fill with dark red text.
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