Duplicate value/text prevention

[esr89]

Hello

I inherited an Excel sheet from my previous worker. The sheet has data organised in a lot of columns. For the heading of these columns, repeated values/texts are somehow prevented, but I don't know how (it's not via data validation) and would like to get rid of that. For example, I have a column with the heading "Data". If I try to add more columns with the same heading "Data", it get's automatically changed to "Data2", Data3" etc.

Thanks for your help!

[#2]

Sounds like it's a Table @esr89 

You can click inside the Table then choose Design and Convert To Range

Generally tables are really good things to have, so I'd be interested in why you need to change it.

@esr89 

[#3]

@esr89 

I guess you have Excel Table which doesn't allow columns' names duplication. The workaround depends on how do you use your data, possible variants

- convert table to the range

- instead of Data1, Data2, etc us "Data ", "Data  ", etc

- split one table one two and second one put directly next to first one

- you may highlight numbers in Data1, Data2, so the visible will be only Data

But from my point view it's better to use different columns' names.

[#4]

@esr89 

Screenshot attached

[#5]

@Wyn Hopkins 

@Sergei Baklan 

Thanks to you both. It is/was indeed a table, and converting to range solves the problem.

The issue with a table in this case is that I have a lot of reporting figures/columns which repeat every year. It would be very tedious to add the year in every column, instead the year is written above all the headings for a certain year (and so the columns all have the same heading).

I will check now if everything still works the intended way despite the data not being in a table.