One common task you may need to do when working with data in Excel is to group duplicates. Grouping duplicates can help you quickly identify and analyze patterns in your data.
How to group duplicates in Excel with WPS Office spreadsheet:
WPS Office Spreadsheet is a free alternative to MS Excel that can be used to group duplicates. Here's how:
Open the spreadsheet containing the duplicates.
Select the data range that contains the duplicates.
Click the "Data" tab at the top of the screen.
Click the "Remove Duplicates" button.
In the dialog box, select the columns containing the duplicates.
Click the "OK" button.
WPS Office Spreadsheet will remove the duplicates and group them, leaving only unique records.
How to group duplicates in Excel with MS Excel
Step 1: Open the Excel file
First, open the Excel file containing the data you want to group duplicates.
Step 2: Select the range of cells
Next, select the range of cells that you want to group duplicates. The range of cells can be a single or multiple columns. To group duplicates in Excel, you first need to select the data range that contains the duplicates.
Step 3: Click on the "Remove Duplicates" button
Once you have selected the range of cells, click the "Data" tab in the Excel ribbon. From there, click the "Remove Duplicates" button in the "Data Tools" group.
Step 4: Choose the columns to group by
In the "Remove Duplicates" dialog box, you'll see a list of columns in your data set. Select the columns that contain the data you want to compare for duplicates. For example, if you have a data set of customer names and addresses, you may want to select the "Name" and "Address" columns.
Step 5: Choose Criteria for Removing Duplicates
After selecting the columns, you must choose the criteria for removing duplicates. You can either select all columns or choose specific columns to compare. You can also choose to keep the first or last instance of the duplicate data or select "Unique records only" to remove all duplicates.
Step 6: Preview and Remove Duplicates
Once you've selected the criteria for removing duplicates, click "OK" to preview the duplicate data. Excel will show you a preview of the duplicate data and highlight the duplicate rows in your data set. You can review the duplicate data and make any necessary changes before removing the duplicates. Click "OK" in the "Remove Duplicates" dialog box to remove the duplicates.
Step 7: Review the results
Finally, review the results to ensure that Excel has correctly grouped duplicates. You should see that Excel has removed duplicate rows, duplicate data, duplicate lines, or duplicate records based on the selected columns. Each unique combination of values appears only once in the data set.
Additional Tips to Save Time and Improve Workflow
Use Conditional Formatting to Highlight Duplicates
In addition to using the "Remove Duplicates" feature, you can also use conditional formatting to highlight duplicate data. It can be helpful if you want to keep duplicate data in your data set but need to identify it for analysis.Use a Pivot Table to Group Data
Another way to group duplicate Excel data is by using a pivot table. Pivot tables allow you to group and summarize data more flexibly than the "Remove Duplicates" feature.Use a Formula to Identify Duplicates
If you need to identify duplicates in a specific column, you can use a formula. You can use the "COUNTIF" formula for a data set of customer names wanting to identify duplicate names.
Learn More about WPS Office
Grouping duplicates in Excel can be a time-consuming task. Still, following the steps and additional tips outlined in this article, you can quickly identify and duplicate group data in your Excel data set. Excel offers a variety of tools to help you streamline your workflow and make data management a breeze. So next time you encounter duplicate data in Excel, you'll know exactly how to handle it.
