May 21, 2015

When lists of data are merged, duplicates can be introduced. Fortunately, Microsoft Excel has a Remove Duplicates feature that will eliminate these rogue records. All that is needed is a column or a set of columns that can be used to establish the duplicates.

This list above has many duplicate records. Two are highlighted (Lonnie and Dwight).

We can remove duplicates based on the first name in this case as no two employees have the same first name. In reality, it would be likely for a list of first names to have duplicates, so a combination of first name, last name and some other criterion would be necessary to find the duplicates.

To seek out and destroy the duplicates:

1. Click into the list.
2. Go to the “Data” tab on the Ribbon and click “Remove Duplicates.”
3. Deselect the columns that aren't going to be used to identify duplicates.
4. Click OK.

In this case, 5 duplicates were found and removed.