Excel Essentials: How to Convert, Filter, and Remove Duplicates from Your Data
Hello Readers!
In this blog, we'll learn about how to turn data into a table and check out some cool tricks like filtering or sorting based on numbers, texts, using colors, and getting rid of duplicate values in data.
One of the first things you should do when working with data in Excel is to convert it to a table. A table is a structured range of data that has a header row and data rows.
To convert your data to a table, you can follow these steps:
How to Filter Data
Filtering data is a way of hiding or showing certain rows or columns based on specific criteria. Filtering can help you find, analyze, and compare data quickly and easily. To apply a filter, you can follow these steps:
How to Use Color Filters
Color filters are a type of filter that allows you to display data based on the cell color, font color, or icon sets. Color filters can help you add a visual dimension to your data and highlight important information. For example, you can use color filters to show the best or worst performers, the highest or lowest values, or the status of a task. To use color filters, you can follow these steps:
Excel will show only the rows that have the selected color or icon set and hide the rest. You can clear the color filter by clicking the drop-down arrow again and selecting Clear Filter.
How to Remove Duplicate Rows
Duplicate rows can make your data messy and inaccurate. To avoid this, you can use the “Remove Duplicates” feature in Excel to delete any rows that have the same values in one or more columns. To do this, you can follow these steps:
Excel will delete any rows that have duplicate values in the selected columns and keep only the first occurrence. It will also tell you how many duplicate rows were removed and how many unique rows remain.
How to Remove Duplicates When You Have Two or More Columns
Sometimes, you may want to remove duplicates based on a combination of two or more columns. To do this, you can use the same “Remove Duplicates” feature, but you need to be careful about selecting the columns that you want to use as criteria. You need to select only the columns that you want to match exactly, and leave out the columns that you don’t care about.
For example, you may have a list of customers with their names, email addresses, and phone numbers and you want to remove customers that have the same name and email address, but not the same phone number, you need to select only the name and email columns, and leave out the phone number column. This way, Excel will delete any rows that have the same name and email, regardless of the phone number.
- Select any cell in your data range.
- Press Ctrl + T / Ctrl L or go to Home > Format as Table and choose a style.
- In the Create Table dialog box, check if the cell range is correct and if your table has headers.
- Click OK.
How to Filter Data
Filtering data is a way of hiding or showing certain rows or columns based on specific criteria. Filtering can help you find, analyze, and compare data quickly and easily. To apply a filter, you can follow these steps:
- Select any cell in your table or data range.
- Press Ctrl + Shift + L or go to Data > Filter.
- Click the drop-down arrow in the column header that you want to filter.
- Choose the criteria that you want to apply. You can use text, number, date, or color filters to refine your data display.
Color filters are a type of filter that allows you to display data based on the cell color, font color, or icon sets. Color filters can help you add a visual dimension to your data and highlight important information. For example, you can use color filters to show the best or worst performers, the highest or lowest values, or the status of a task. To use color filters, you can follow these steps:
- Apply a color or an icon set to your data. You can use conditional formatting or manual formatting to do this.
- Select any cell in your table or data range.
- Press Ctrl + Shift + L or go to Data > Filter.
- Click the drop-down arrow in the column header that has the color or the icon set that you want to filter.
- Go to Sort by Color and choose the color or the icon set that you want to display.
How to Remove Duplicate Rows
Duplicate rows can make your data messy and inaccurate. To avoid this, you can use the “Remove Duplicates” feature in Excel to delete any rows that have the same values in one or more columns. To do this, you can follow these steps:
- Select the data range that you want to remove duplicates from.
- Go to Data > Remove Duplicates.
- In the Remove Duplicates dialog box, check the columns that you want to use as criteria for removing duplicates. You can select one or more columns, depending on your data.
- Click OK.
How to Remove Duplicates When You Have Two or More Columns
Sometimes, you may want to remove duplicates based on a combination of two or more columns. To do this, you can use the same “Remove Duplicates” feature, but you need to be careful about selecting the columns that you want to use as criteria. You need to select only the columns that you want to match exactly, and leave out the columns that you don’t care about.
For example, you may have a list of customers with their names, email addresses, and phone numbers and you want to remove customers that have the same name and email address, but not the same phone number, you need to select only the name and email columns, and leave out the phone number column. This way, Excel will delete any rows that have the same name and email, regardless of the phone number.
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| End result after selecting only the required two columns |
However, if you select all three columns, Excel will delete any rows that have the same name, email, and phone number. This may not be what you want, because you may end up deleting some customers that have different phone numbers, but the same name and email.
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| End result after selecting all three columns |
Therefore, you need to be precise about selecting the columns that you want to use as criteria for removing duplicates. You can always check the preview of the results before clicking OK, to make sure that you are not deleting any rows that you want to keep.
I hope you enjoyed this blog post and learned something new about Excel. If you have any questions or feedback, please leave a comment below. I would love to hear from you. Thank you for reading!
Please refer to this file.
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