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Justin Czujko's avatar
Justin Czujko
Copper Contributor
May 22, 2018
Solved

Remove Duplicates Feature: All columns must meet all criteria?

Hi,   When using the Remove Duplicates Feature, do all the columns checked "must meet criteria" or is it any column can meet criteria and it will de-dup (delete duplicated record)?   Thank you, ...
  • Matt Mickle's avatar
    May 23, 2018

    It deletes rows based on the columns you have selected.  i.e. it looks for duplicates based on the combination of the columns you have selected.

     

    If you have this list:  and you select to delete only by the ID column then the bottom row will be removed (1 | Johnny).  The remove duplicates process keeps the first instance from top to bottom and removes items below:

     

    ID Name
    1 Matt
    2 John
    3 Gary
    1 Johnny

     

    If we have data like the below and we want to delete based on ID and Name columns.  The process will only remove the last record (1 | Matt).:

     

    ID Name
    1 Matt
    2 John
    3 Gary
    1 Jerome
    1 Matt

     

    Here are a few articles that describe it:

     

    https://support.office.com/en-us/article/find-and-remove-duplicates-00e35bea-b46a-4d5d-b28e-66a552dc138d

     

    https://www.quora.com/When-you-remove-duplicates-on-excel-does-it-remove-them-from-top-or-bottom

     

    Hope this helps.

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