How To Find Duplicate Values in Excel

How To Find Duplicate Values in Excel

While working with Excel worksheets or consolidating multiple files, you may find yourself needing to check for duplicates and deleting empty rows. Depending on the tasks you have taken on, you may be faced with a multitude of situations.

Conditional formatting is a viable tool that is useful in presenting data in an Excel spreadsheet in a more enhanced way. The main function of conditional formatting is to ensure substantial data is presented in a manner that is easy to decipher. Conditional formatting can be used to highlight data using colours and icons for a cell or a range of cells. The essential function is to attract the attention of the users and direct them to the most essential data in the spreadsheet.

When using conditional formatting, you have to select a cell or range of cells to apply the format. The condition of the cell will not be returned if the cell is blank. Conditional Formatting has pre-defined conditions, but the formulas can be used for tasks that are more complex. The Conditional Formatting tool can be found in the Home tab. Once you select Highlight Cells Rules and choose Duplicate Values, the Excel application will highlight every cell that has been found more than once.

The steps to finding duplicates in Excel through the use of Conditional Formatting are as follows:

1. Select the data range where the duplicates exist.
2. In the Home tab, select Conditional Formatting, and from the drop-down menu, select Highlight Cell Rules and click Duplicate Values.
3. You will see the Duplicate Values popup window. On the left side, you will see the word Duplicate. In the values with drop-down section, choose your colour to highlight the duplicate cells and click OK.

Once you find duplicate values, you will be able to delete them from a selected range. Before the deletion, keep a copy of the table because the duplicates will be permanently deleted.

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