How to Remove Duplicates in Excel (3 Ways)

The fastest way to remove duplicates in Excel is Data > Remove Duplicates: select your range, choose which columns to check, and click OK. You can also highlight duplicates first or use the UNIQUE function. Here is each method.

Duplicate rows quietly break totals, counts, and reports. Excel gives you three good ways to deal with them, depending on whether you want to delete them, just see them first, or keep your original list untouched.

Method 1: The Remove Duplicates button

1. Click any cell inside your data.
2. Go to the Data tab and click Remove Duplicates.
3. Tick the columns Excel should check. To remove only fully identical rows, keep all columns ticked.
4. Click OK. Excel deletes the duplicates and tells you how many it removed.

Method 2: Highlight duplicates before deleting

If you want to see the duplicates first, select your range, go to Home > Conditional Formatting > Highlight Cells Rules > Duplicate Values. Excel colors every repeated value so you can review them before removing anything.

Method 3: The UNIQUE function (Microsoft 365)

If you have Microsoft 365, the UNIQUE function returns a clean list without touching the original. In an empty cell, type this and press Enter:

=UNIQUE(A2:A100)

The result updates automatically when your source data changes — handy for live reports. Pair it with a pivot table to summarize the deduplicated data, or learn the IF function to flag duplicates with a formula.