How to Remove Duplicates in Google Sheets

September 11, 2026

Delete duplicate rows from a Google Sheets range with the built-in Remove duplicates tool, and choose which columns have to match for a row to count.

A contact list has the same people entered two or three times, and you want one row per person. Google Sheets has a built-in tool that finds and deletes the repeats.

Select the range you want to clean

Drag across the block of data, including the header row. To check the whole sheet, click the empty box above row 1 and left of column A to select everything.

If the sheet has several columns, select the full rows rather than a single column. When only one column is selected, Sheets deletes duplicate cells in that column alone and shifts the cells below upward, which knocks them out of line with the other columns.

Open Data, Data cleanup, Remove duplicates

Go to Data, Data cleanup, Remove duplicates. A dialog opens showing how many rows and columns are selected.

Tell Sheets whether the data has a header row

Check Data has header row if row 1 holds column names. Sheets then keeps that row in place and leaves it out of the comparison.

Choose which columns to compare

Under Columns to analyze, leave Select all checked to treat a row as a duplicate only when every column matches. Uncheck it and tick specific columns to compare fewer fields.

For example, with Name in column A and Email in column B, ticking only Column B - Email removes rows that share an email address even if the name is spelled differently on each.

Click Remove duplicates

A message reports how many duplicate rows were found and removed, and how many unique rows remain. The first occurrence of each row is kept and later ones are deleted. If the result is not what you expected, press Ctrl+Z (Cmd+Z on a Mac) to put the rows back.

To see duplicates without deleting anything. Select the column, go to Format, Conditional formatting, choose Custom formula is, and enter =COUNTIF($A:$A,A1)>1. Every value that appears more than once in column A gets highlighted, and you decide what to remove.

To get a clean list in a spare column. Enter =UNIQUE(A2:A100) in an empty column. It lists each distinct value from A2:A100 once, leaves the original data untouched, and updates whenever the source changes.