Conditional Formatting won't work on data pasted from internet

Hello,

I tried to find a solution to my problem through these conversations but have had no luck...

I am pasting data from a website (contact info such as Names, City, State, etc.) into a spreadsheet as plain text and then add a conditional format to show duplicate names from a different column I already have in the same sheet. For some reason, the conditional format won't recognize duplicate values in either column, even though they are spelled the exact same and are both general or text format. If I re-type the same exact name in the cell that I pasted from online, it will then recognize it and add the conditional format...what am I missing here??? I have tried pasting the data from the spreadsheet online in every way possible (normal, plain text, unicode, html) but the conditional format won't recognize the names as duplicates...

For example:

Column A has 100 names (first and last in same cell). Column C has the pasted names (first and last in same cell) from a website. They are in the same format (general) and appear to be exactly the same but when I apply the conditional format - duplicate values to both Columns, nothing highlights (except the "name" header in Column C that appears twice in that column). When I re-type the name in column  C, it will then recognize it as the same and then will highlight it. If I re-type the name in column A, nothing happens. 

This will save me hours of time, as it would be helpful to know which names have already been added to my current database, so hopefully there is an easy solution here. 

Thanks!