Microsoft Excel help request - The Drunken stepFORUM - A place to discuss your worthless opinions

danieldamone · #1 02-19-2009, 11:04 AM

i know this is probably too specific to be an entire thread, but i really need someones help and soon. If i have a list of a few hundred unit numbers in excel, and i want to find any dupilcates, how do i do that. Is there a way to isolate the duplicate numbers? I know i could arrange the column numberically, but that would still be super inefficient. Thanks guys.

Dan.

**~~DSF Guest 10~~** · #2 02-19-2009, 11:05 AM

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My advice is to arrange them in numerical order, and scroll through to find the dups. it cant be THAT complex.... ?

maybe i am missing somethin

danieldamone · #3 02-19-2009, 11:10 AM

they're 16 digit numbers, so after looking at them for a few minutes, it becomes impossible to consentrate.

**~~DSF Guest 10~~** · #4 02-19-2009, 11:12 AM

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haha, you're screwed then. I'm jk.

Did you try the help feature?

binary_jester · #5 02-19-2009, 11:24 AM

Got google?

danieldamone · #6 02-19-2009, 11:24 AM

yeah...the help feature doesn't help at all. It tells me to buy an add on. The thing is, excel can do so many things. I know there has to be away to do this, I just can't figure it out.

ms. cellany · #7 02-19-2009, 11:25 AM

Um, if you just want to get rid of the duplicates and if you have Excel 2007, under the "data" tab is a "remove duplicates" function.

**~~DSF Guest 10~~** · #8 02-19-2009, 11:27 AM

go for it

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/ex...366161033.aspx

SirLongFoot · #9 02-19-2009, 11:28 AM

Microsoft Office Excel 2003
Microsoft Excel 2002

A duplicate row (also called a record) in a list is one where all values in the row are an exact match of all the values in another row. To delete duplicate rows, you filter a list for unique rows, delete the original list, and then replace it with the filtered list. The original list must have column headers.

Caution Because you are permanently deleting data, it's a good idea to copy the original list to another worksheet or workbook before using the following procedure.

Select all the rows, including the column headers, in the list you want to filter.
Tip

Click the top left cell of the range, and then drag to the bottom right cell.
On the Data menu, point to Filter, and then click Advanced Filter.
In the Advanced Filter dialog box, click Filter the list, in place.
Select the Unique records only check box, and then click OK.
The filtered list is displayed and the duplicate rows are hidden.

On the Edit menu, click Office Clipboard.
The Clipboard task pane is displayed.

Make sure the filtered list is still selected, and then click Copy .
The filtered list is highlighted with bounding outlines and the selection appears as an item at the top of the Clipboard.

On the Data menu, point to Filter, and then click Show All.
The original list is re-displayed.

Press the DELETE key.
The original list is deleted.

In the Clipboard, click on the filtered list item.
The filtered list appears in the same location as the original list.

ms. cellany · #10 02-19-2009, 11:29 AM

If you don't want to delete your duplicates, just find them:

A real quick way of doing it is to make a new column consisting of counts of the relevant data.
eg. if your data is column A, then in column B do "=COUNT(A1,$A$1:$A$100)" and copy/paste that to cover all the cells. Then anything greater than 1 has a duplicate.