Highlighting duplicates in Excel is a common task that allows you to quickly identify and manage repeated values in your data. Excel provides an easy way to do this using Conditional Formatting. To highlight duplicates, first select the cells you want to check. This can be a single column, multiple columns, or a specific data range.
Next, go to the Home tab and find the Conditional Formatting option in the Styles group. Click on it, and from the dropdown menu, choose Highlight Cells Rules, then select Duplicate Values. A dialog box will appear with formatting options. Excel usually defaults to highlighting duplicate values in red text, but you can change the highlight color or text style by selecting different options from the drop-down menu.
After you choose how you want the duplicates to be formatted, Excel will automatically highlight all duplicate values in the range you selected based on your chosen formatting style. You can highlight duplicates within a single column or across multiple adjacent columns. If your goal is to remove duplicates rather than highlight them, Excel has a Remove Duplicates feature under the Data tab.
Keep in mind that Excel considers cells with exactly the same content as duplicates, including any leading or trailing spaces and capitalization differences. If you want to highlight unique values instead, you can follow the same process but select Unique in the Duplicate Values dialog box. For more complex criteria or non-adjacent cells, you might need to use formulas with Conditional Formatting to identify duplicates or unique values.
