SearchIf you have list of values that contains duplicates in your Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and you want to reduce your list to remove all of the duplicate values, what is the easiest way to do this?
Let’s say you have a list of years that contains duplicate years and you want to trim down the list to remove the duplicates. One option would be to sort the years in ascending order and manually delete the duplicates, and then sort the years again to remove the empty cells. This may not be too difficult if you have a short list, but what if your list is really long? Manually removing duplicates could take a lot of your time.
Another option is to use Excel’s built in Remove Duplicates feature! If you are not sure where to find this feature or how to use it, then follow my tutorial steps below.
Here is an example of a list that contains duplicate years. We will call this the “before” screenshot.
- Highlight all of the cells that you would like to remove duplicates on.
- Navigate to the Data tab and click on Remove Duplicates button.
- On the Remove Duplicates dialog window, make sure the correct column is selected, and click the OK button.
- You will receive a dialog box indicating how many duplicate values were found and removed and how many unique values remain. Click OK.
- The unique year values remain. We will call this the “After” screenshot.
