Introduction
Do you have a ton of data in Excel, but are having trouble finding duplicates? In this post, we’ll show you how removing duplicates can help you clean up your data and find insights that would otherwise be hidden. We’ll also share some best practices for identifying duplicate records and removing them from your dataset.
Understanding the importance of identifying duplicates
Data analysis is a critical part of your business. It’s what allows you to understand your customers and make informed decisions based on this information. But if you’re not careful, duplicates can skew your data and hide the real story.
Duplicates are also more difficult to analyze – they’re essentially extra rows in a table that don’t add anything useful to an analysis but still take up space in memory and processing power when working with them later on.
Assigning unique IDs to each record
In order to remove duplicates in one click, you must assign a unique ID to each record. You can use any value as an ID–a number, date or anything else.
In this example we’ll be using the date that the record was created as our Unique Identifier (UID). If you have a lot of historical data it may be easier to use a random UID generator instead because it doesn’t require any additional information from your system.
Creating a new column with unique values
To create a new column with unique values, you’ll need to use the VLOOKUP function in Excel.
To start, click on any cell in the data table and select “Data” from the menu bar at the top of your screen. Then choose “Data Validation” from this drop-down menu (or press Control + D). This will open up another window where you can add validation rules for each column or row in your table. In order to make sure all records have unique IDs, we want our rule to be applied across all columns at once–so make sure that “Whole Column” is selected under “Apply To.” Next, enter this formula into one of these cells: =VLOOKUP(A2,'[ID]’,2)&”-“,B2)&”-“,C2)&”-“,D2). Note: Make sure there are no spaces between any numbers!
Removing duplicates by using Excel’s Remove Duplicates function
Removing duplicate rows in Excel is a simple process. Select the column containing duplicates and click Data > Remove Duplicates. In the dialog box that appears, select the option to ignore blanks and numbers, then click OK to remove all duplicate values from your dataset.
With these simple steps, you can easily remove duplicates from your data.
With these simple steps, you can easily remove duplicates from your data.
- Select the range of cells that contains the duplicate values and click Data > Remove Duplicates. The Remove Duplicates dialog box appears on-screen.
- Click OK to remove the duplicates in one click!
Conclusion
Now you know how to remove duplicates from your data in Excel. You can use the Remove Duplicates function and unique IDs to remove duplicates from any type of spreadsheet, including Google Sheets or other programs like Numbers or Word. If you have any questions about this post or need help with some other Big Data And Analytics project, please contact us at [email protected]. We’re here to help!
