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How to hide duplicate records in columns in Excel?

Author Siluvia Last modified

Sometimes you may need to hide all duplicates and keep the unique values for columns in Excel. In this article, we will show you methods of hiding all duplicates including/excluding the first one in Excel.

Hide duplicates in columns with Conditional Formatting
Hide duplicates in columns with Kutools for Excel


Hide duplicates in columns with Conditional Formatting

Supposing you have a range of values as below screenshot shown. For hiding all duplicates including the first one in Excel, please do as follows.

sample data

1. Select the range you want to hide duplicates. Here I select range A1:F11.

2. Then click Conditional Formatting > Highlight Cells Rules > Duplicate Values under Home tab. See screenshot:

click Conditional Formatting > Highlight Cells Rules > Duplicate Values

3. In the Duplicate Values dialog box, select Custom Format in the values with drop-down list, and then click the OK button.

select Custom Format in the dialog box

4. In the Format Cells dialog box, go to the Font tab, and in the Color drop-down list, choose a font color which matches the background color of your selected range cell. And finally click the OK button. See screenshot:

choose a font color matches the background color of you cells in the Format Cells dialog box

5. When it returns to the Duplicate Values dialog box, click the OK button.

Now all duplicate records in selected columns are hidden immediately.

all duplicate records in selected columns are hidden


Hide duplicates in columns with Kutools for Excel

The above method will hide all duplicates including the first one in selected columns. Here I will introduce a handy utility of Kutools for Excel, with this Select Duplicate & Unique Cells utility, you can quickly select not only all duplicates including the first one, but also all duplicates except the first one. After selecting the duplicates you want, you can hide them easily. Please do as follows.

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1. Select the column you want to hide duplicates.

2. Click Kutools > Select > Select Duplicate & Unique Cells. See screenshot:

click Select Duplicate & Unique Cells feature of kutools

3. In the Select Duplicate & Unique Cells dialog box, check the Duplicates (Except 1st one) option or the All duplicate (Including 1st one) option as you need, and then click the OK button. Then all duplicates are selected.

set criteria in the dialog box

4. Right click the selected cells and select Format Cells. In the Format Cells dialog box, click Custom under Number tab, and then type three semicolons ;;; into the Type box, and finally click the OK button.

Right click and select Format Cells, set options in the dialog box

Now all selected duplicates are hidden immediately.

Note: This Select Duplicate & Unique Cells feature can only applied to one column, if you have multiple column data, please apply this feature one by one.

  If you want to have a free trial (30-day) of this utility, please click to download it, and then go to apply the operation according above steps.

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