Removing Duplicates in Excel

So most people accustomed to Excel will probably know this, but there is a much easier way for removing duplicates than sifting through the info line by line, by monotonous line. With a few clicks of your mouse you should be able to remove any and all duplicates, once again easy-peasy, keeping in mind that each version of Excel is slightly different (I’m using 2010 at home and 2013 at work – bar the cosmetic touches and slight variation on VB coding language there isn’t much difference anyway). Let’s get started.

In the previous post I made mention of Sam’s travel agency, so let’s stick to what we know. Sam has kept a database of ALL her transactions for the past year, and would like to check who all her travellers are (taking into account multiple travellers travel multiple times. Let’s help her out.

All other information in this small example is inconsequential, as the only info we want extracted is from column B.

See that Data header, we select that and select Advanced. You’ll notice the very ominous looking explanation of specify complex criteria blah blah blah set of a query. They really could’ve just said Let’s remove all the duplicates in a range.

First things first,

·          - Select Copy to another location

·          - Select Unique records only

·          - Select your list which you’d like to remove the duplicates, in this case Column B cell 1 to 14

·          - And lastly select where you’d like to copy your shortened and devoid of duplicates list (this can be anywhere – well not in your        underwear drawer, keep it simple and in Excel).

And voila! Your duplicates have been removed. (This example has been significantly oversimplified but you should get the idea. Having thirteen names and thirteen thousand names will put this into perspective)

Hope this helps those that aren’t working on Excel on a day-to-day basis