Our last tutorial taught you how to use conditional formatting on Microsoft Excel 2007 & 2010 to colour code data. This week we look at another use for conditional formatting – highlighting duplicate and unique values within a spreadsheet.

We’ve created a basic table of data of a pretend survey in which children were asked their shoe size. This tutorial shows you how to use conditional formatting to eliminate multiple entries and also to find unique values. If the data is entered manually these tips are great for making sure there are no mistakes with the data.

1. Eliminate accidental entries

For the purposes of the tutorial the data is limited and so it is easy to see duplicate/unique content by eye. However, if the data was for a whole school year of 300 pupils then conditional formatting becomes highly useful.

Firstly we are going to check to see if there are any multiple entries. Select the data you want checked and click Conditional Formatting > Highlight Cells Rule > Duplicate Values. Read the rest of “Excel Tutorial – Finding Duplicate Values & Unique Values using Conditional Formatting”