Another Stupid Excel Question

[Alex]

Originally Posted by Kevy Baby

Actually, two.

1. Why the heck does the "Reviewing" toolbar keep popping up? I keep turning it off (View > Toolbars), but it keeps coming back. I went to the "Customize" menu (View > Toolbars > Customize), clicked the "Options" tab and clicked the "Reset menu and toolbar usage data" button. Still didn't make it stay away. It drives me crazy
2. How difficult is it to dedupe using Excel? Or is it even possible?

Don't know on #1, I'd have to be at work to play with it and maybe figure it out.

On #2, I think this will work:

1. Highlight the column you want to use use as the key (if it needs to be some combination of columns, the easiest thing is to probably create a new column that simply concatenates the columns into a single value.

2. Go to Data --> Filter --> Advanced Filter. There should be a checkbox on that for something like "Unique values only" which should filter out the duplicates.

If you want the then truly have the dupes gone, highlight the visilble cells with your filtered data and hit alt-; (alt and semicolon) which copies visible cells (and not the hidden ones in between), go to a separate worksheet and paste it in. Then you can delete or stop using the first worksheet.

[Kevy Baby]

Originally Posted by Alex

On #2, I think this will work:

1. Highlight the column you want to use use as the key (if it needs to be some combination of columns, the easiest thing is to probably create a new column that simply concatenates the columns into a single value.

2. Go to Data --> Filter --> Advanced Filter. There should be a checkbox on that for something like "Unique values only" which should filter out the duplicates.

If you want the then truly have the dupes gone, highlight the visible cells with your filtered data and hit alt-; (alt and semicolon) which copies visible cells (and not the hidden ones in between), go to a separate worksheet and paste it in. Then you can delete or stop using the first worksheet.

This worked like a charm - thank you!

I also didn't know about the copying only visible cells - that was a great tip as well!

[BarTopDancer]

Originally Posted by Kevy Baby

I also didn't know about the copying only visible cells - that was a great tip as well!

oo! I didn't either! Thank you Alex!

[Kevy Baby]

Originally Posted by Alex

1. Highlight the column you want to use use as the key (if it needs to be some combination of columns, the easiest thing is to probably create a new column that simply concatenates the columns into a single value.

2. Go to Data --> Filter --> Advanced Filter. There should be a checkbox on that for something like "Unique values only" which should filter out the duplicates.

If you want the then truly have the dupes gone, highlight the visilble cells with your filtered data and hit alt-; (alt and semicolon) which copies visible cells (and not the hidden ones in between), go to a separate worksheet and paste it in. Then you can delete or stop using the first worksheet.

OK - actually used this today to dedupe 1921 records down to 1552 (I did it manually last time). Thank you again - I will be using this many times in the future.

One question though: you do you show the "hidden" rows again? I have Autofiltered the data then un-Autofiltered it. I am just wondering if there is a more direct way (un-hiding rows doesn't work).