How to remove duplicates in Google Sheets?
Duplicate entries or duplicate rows happen when your data appears more than once. They must be found and removed before any data analysis is performed.
Imagine you have two instances of the same customer transaction in your database. When you summarize your data, you will make decisions based on inaccurate data. Fixing them in Google Spreadsheets does not require much time. In this guide, we'll see how to remove duplicates in Google Sheets.
How to remove duplicates using the menu?
Use the menu to remove duplicates:
- Select the relevant column
- Menu-> Data -> Data clean-up -> Remove duplicates
From the screen that comes up, you have to make sure to select the title. The header will be included unless you specify that. With 'Expand' you can expand your selection for other columns.
Since I have two columns here, columns A and B are shown. If I had more columns, they would be shown, as well. 5 columns, for instance, would be shown A: F.
Before going to the menu, you need to select the column. If you go to the menu without making a selection, you will encounter a warning:
Just as we can select an entire column, we can do the same by choosing a specific range of cells.
As you can see, column B is not affected at all when we operate on column A.
When we select two columns at the same time and go to the menu, 'remove duplicates' will not be visible. If you want to operate for two columns,
- Select single column->go to menu
- Select Remove duplicates
- You can duplicate the column selection from the menu that comes up.
How to remove duplicates using the help menu?
We can remove duplicates using the menu, as well as using the help menu.
- Select relevant column
- Menu->Data -> Help
- Write->Remove duplicates
How to remove duplicates using the UNIQUE function?
Now, let's use a function to do what we did using the menu.
- Come to the column you want to print the new column
- =UNIQUE (cell range)
You can find detailed information about the function here->"How to use the UNIQUE function in Google Sheets?"
What to do if there is a space at the beginning of the data?
If your data starts with a space, it does not include repeaters. You need to remove the spaces first using the menu and function.
How to remove spaces using the menu?
Let's see how to decode the data using the menu in the header with spaces:
Menu -> Data -> Data clean-up -> Trim whitespace
How to remove spaces using the TRIM function?
You can also do the operation using the menu with the function.
- Go to the column you want to remove spaces
- =TRIM(cell range)
The spaces at the head of the cell have been removed. Now we can handle duplicates.
You can also find more information about duplicates at "How to highlight duplicates in Google Sheets"
