How to Dedupe Records in a Spreadsheet

Last Updated: April 30, 2018 Tested

Many of us deal with very large lists in Excel, such as large mailing lists. Excel 2007 has a built-in deduping feature, but deduping can be done in almost any spreadsheet software.

Steps

1
Open the Spreadsheet that might have duplicate entries.
2
Sorting:
- Highlight the columns and click on Sort.
- Sort the chosen column containing duplicate fields in ascending order.
Advertisement
3
Type the following formula into the first empty cell in the row =IF(A2=A1,0,1) . Be sure to modify cell references to suit your sheet.
4
Fill the formula down the column (or paste special).
5
Filter out the duplicates:
- Select the column with the formulas and click filter.
- Filter the zeros
- Delete the entire row that has a '0' field, not just the data within that row. Duplicate entries will now be weeded out of your sheet.
Advertisement