How to Remove Duplicates in Excel

Steps

1. Select your data range - Click any cell in your table, or select the specific range that contains the rows you want to dedupe.
2. Open Data > Remove Duplicates - On the Data tab, choose Remove Duplicates. Excel opens a dialog listing every column.
3. Choose the columns that define a duplicate - Tick all columns to remove fully identical rows, or only key columns (like Email or ID) to dedupe by those fields.
4. Confirm and review - Click OK. Excel keeps the first occurrence of each unique row, removes the rest, and reports how many duplicates were deleted.

Before You Start

• Remove Duplicates keeps the first matching row and deletes later ones - sort first if you care which row is kept.
• Always work on a copy; Remove Duplicates permanently deletes rows from the sheet.
• Deduping by selected columns is the key to removing duplicate customers by email even when other columns differ.

Alternative Methods

• Use the online Remove Duplicates tool - Upload your workbook to the browser-based tool, choose matching columns, preview the cleaned sheet, and download a new file - no Excel required.
• Flag duplicates with COUNTIF - Add a helper column with =COUNTIF($A$2:$A2,A2)>1 to mark duplicates as TRUE, then filter and delete them manually.
• Highlight with conditional formatting - Home > Conditional Formatting > Highlight Cells Rules > Duplicate Values shows duplicates before you remove them.