[thelist] OT -deleting dupLicates in excel document

[Luther, Ron]

Roger Ly suggested a fine solution:


Hi Roger!


I use a minor variant on this technique.

>>Sort the data by column A, so all your email addresses are sorted.

Yup - need the sort.  (If you need to look for dups across _several_
columns, 
you can concatenate them into a new column and sort on that ... This
trick 
still works fine.)


>>In column B1, enter in the value FALSE.

This step is not necessary ... from my PoV anyway.


>>In column B2, enter the formula (without quotes)
>>	"=A1=A2"

Okay ... Here's where I use a bit of a variant ... How about using the
following 
formula in B2 instead?

=if(a2=a1,"Holy Crap, Batman! It's another stinking DUPLICATE!", "")

The rest of your steps are fine; copy the equation down, after it
evaluates do 
a copy/paste-special-values, then sort on this 'former'-formula column
and delete 
the duplicate records.

Using the conditional equation allows you to put in whatever 'trigger
phrase' 
you want to see when a duplicate occurs.  (And, if you really want, you
can 
add a phrase in for non-duplicate between the quotes in that "") I show
at the 
end of the equation. I generally don't bother with that. [However, I
generally 
use something more, uh, 'colorful', than your buddy's "true/false".]


HTH,

RonL.