This is something that I’ve just found myself, and I wish I would have known about it a few days ago when I was asked to extract a distinct list of values from a column.
Start off by highlighting the range of data that you would like to find the distinct values in, I’ll be using the below simple sample data for the purpose of this post:
Example Data
On the “Data” tab of Excel 2010, find the “Remove Duplicates” button:
Click the button, and the Remove Duplicates Dialogue will appear:
Remove Duplicates Dialogue
On the top right of the Remove Duplicates Dialogue box, you’ll see a check box – “My data has headers” – you can toggle this check box depending on whether or not you have headers in your data. I’m going to leave it checked for the purpose of this example. The check box “Column” is the name of the column I’m removing duplicates from, if multiple columns are selected in the first step – they can be managed from here.
Once you’re ready, click OK, and the below message will appear – giving you a few details about what has occurred:
Remove Duplicates Message Box
The result:
Remove Duplicates Result
