A spreadsheet is a great way to store a lot of information in a dense area, but these documents often become unwieldy and unwieldy when used over a long period of time.
Whether your spreadsheet is tracking your family's budget 7 Useful Excel Sheets to Instantly Improve Your Family's Budget 7 Useful Excel Sheets to Instantly Improve Your Family's Budget It's not always easy to set up a family budget , but these seven templates will give you the structure you need to get started. Read More or people who sign up for your newsletter Learn Something New With 10 Worth-It Email Newsletters Newsletter Learn Something New With 10 Worth-It Email Newsletters You'll be amazed at the quality of today's newsletters. They are making a comeback. Subscribe to these ten fantastic newsletters and find out why. Read More This can be a real problem if you need to check for duplicates.
Fortunately, you can delegate the work to your computer. By using conditional formatting or the COUNTIF function, you can find duplicate columns or duplicate rows in a spreadsheet in no time. Here's how to do it.
Conditional formatting is the fastest and easiest way to find duplicates on a single sheet. We are going to use this technique to classify this database of email addresses. This Access database tutorial will help you get started. This Access Database Tutorial will help you get started with Microsoft Access. This guide will have your database up and running in no time. Once you understand the basics, you'll be well on your way to mastery. Read More
The first step is to select all the data that we want to scan for duplicates. So, go to the Styles House section tab and navigate to Conditional Formatting> Highlight Cells Rules> Duplicate values .
This will open a window that allows you to customize the way duplicate values are laid out. This is an optional step, so if you're just checking for duplicates and don't care about the color scheme, click OK move on.
You should find that the duplicate entries are now highlighted in red. This should make it easier for you to remove unnecessary cells, or even at least understand at a glance what information is extraneous.
Sometimes you may want to search for duplicates on more than one sheet, and that requires a combination of conditional formatting and the COUNTIF formula. This technique will also work with earlier versions of Excel, and its Mac equivalent Best Mac Apps of 2015 (and our favorite updates) Best Mac Apps of 2015 (and our favorite updates) Brilliant calendar apps, Twitter apps with Loads of features, a whole new Office experience, and a cheeky way to find out the weather were just a few of the best OS X apps released or updated this year. Read more, numbers.
This time, our database of email addresses is divided into two different sheets in the same document. First, we need to set up a function Do you need to learn Excel? 10 experts will teach you for free! Do you need to learn Excel? 10 experts will teach you for free! Learning to use the more advanced features of Excel can be difficult. To make it a little easier, we've tracked down the best Excel gurus that can help you master Microsoft Excel. Read More
We are going to use COUNTIF, which uses the COUNTIF(range, criteria) syntax. For my example, the function will read:
= COUNTIF (Sith! $ A: $ A, A1)
Here are a couple of important details to unpack so that you can reuse this function for your own needs. First, there's the reference to a different blade - mine says Sith! due to the theme, but you may need to use Sheet2! or whatever name you have given to that particular sheet.
Second, there is the criteria, which unlike the range does not use an absolute reference. This is because we want the range of cells being checked to stay the same each time, but we want each individual function to search for an individual email address How to Whitelist Email Addresses in Outlook How to Whitelist Email Addresses email addresses in Outlook If you're using Outlook and are fed up with certain emails being automatically marked as junk, then whitelisting is the answer. Here's how to set that up with ease! Read more.
Once the function is in place, use the bottom right corner of the cell to fill in as many rows as needed.
As you can see in cell B5, the function will count any duplicates it finds on the other sheet. We can make this information a bit easier to digest by applying another piece of conditional formatting to the column.
Highlight the entire column by clicking on its header, then go to the Home tab and navigate to Conditional Formatting> Highlight Cells Rules> Larger than .
Enter 0 in the popup, and make any style modifications you require using the dropdown/dropdown menu. press OK and you should see something like the results below.
The number of duplicates present on the other sheet will be counted and highlighted for your convenience. We can combine that with the first technique in this article to give a complete picture of all the duplicates in the document.
With that information at your fingertips, removing any duplicates from your document should be a snap.
The techniques in this article will allow you to check your spreadsheet for duplicates, but this type of task is even easier to do once you're a VBA master. How You Can Create Your Own Simple Application With VBA How You Can Create Your Own Simple Application With VBA … Read more.
VBA is a branch of Microsoft's Visual Basic programming language that is used throughout the Office suite, but is particularly powerful when used in conjunction with Excel. VBA enables users to create macros 4 Mistakes You Can Avoid When Programming Excel Macros With VBA 4 Mistakes You Can Avoid When Programming Excel Macros With VBA Simple code and macros are the keys to Microsoft Excel's superpowers. Even non-programmers can easily add impressive functionality to their spreadsheets with Virtual Basics for Applications (VBA). Avoid These Beginner Programming Mistakes! Read More
As explained above, it is possible to find duplicates in Excel without having to learn VBA. However, if you need to perform these kinds of tasks on a regular basis, it might be something worth learning about. It's an accessible language that can be used to great effect as part of the Microsoft Office suite, so check it out if you want to expand your knowledge.
Need help finding duplicates using this technique? Or do you have another suggestion for users that will complement their Excel experience? Head over to the comments section below to join the conversation.
