How to Find Duplicates in Excel

Normally when we have dirty data, we tend to get a lot of duplicates. But in Excel it is very easy to spot the duplicates for your data cleanup!

Here is our sample list of words, you can see it has a lot of duplicates:

I explain how you can do this below:

Download excel workbookHow-to-Find-Duplicates.xlsx

STEP 1: Select your list of words / data:

STEP 2: Go to Home > Conditional Formatting > Highlight Cells Rules > Duplicate Values

STEP 3: You can select the formatting that you want. For our example, we selected Green Fill with Dark Green Text.

Click OK.

You will now see the magic happen, all of the duplicate values are now highlighted in your Excel worksheet!

Bryan

Bryan Hong is an IT Software Developer for more than 10 years and has the following certifications: Microsoft Certified Professional Developer (MCPD): Web Developer, Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS): Windows Applications, Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) and Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator (MCSA).

He is also an Amazon #1 bestselling author of 4 Microsoft Excel books and a teacher of Microsoft Excel & Office at the MyExecelOnline Academy Online Course.