How to quickly find partial duplicates in an Excel column？

doc find patial duplicate 1
Supposing there is a list of IP addresses in your sheet, and some of addresses are duplicate in first three numbers, here the job is to find the duplicates IP addresses which are only different in the last number as below screenshot shown. How can you quickly find these partial duplicates without comparing one by one in Excel?

Find partial duplicates with formulas

Find partial duplicates with Kutools for Excel good idea3

arrow blue right bubble Find partial duplicates with formulas

To find partial duplicates from a column, you can do as below:

1. Select a blank cell next to the IP, B2 for instance, and enter this formula =LEFT(A2,9), drag auto fill handle down to apply this formula to the cells you need. See screenshot:
doc find patial duplicate 2

2. Then go to next cell beside the formula1, C2 for instance, enter this formula =COUNTIF(B:B,B2), and drag fill handle over the cells you want. Then the result 2 (or other number bigger than 1) indicates the relative IP address are duplicates, 1 indicates unique. See screenshot:
doc find patial duplicate 3

Tip: in above formulas, A2 is the first IP address, and 9 is the first 9 characters you want to compare, you can change as you want.

arrow blue right bubble Find partial duplicates with Kutools for Excel

Kutools for Excel, with more than 300 handy functions, makes your jobs more easier. 
Free Download
free full-featured in 30 days

If you have Kutools for Excel, you can combine its Split Cells and Select Duplicate & Unique Cells utilities.

After free installing Kutools for Excel, please do as below:

1. Select the IP addresses and click Kutools > Merge & Split > Split Cells. See screenshot:
doc find patial duplicate 4

2. In the Split Cells dialog, check Split to Columns option in Type section, and check Specify width option and enter 9 into the next textbox. See screenshot:
doc kutools split cells 2

Tip: 9 indicates to split cells by every 9 characters.

3. Click Ok, and a dialog pops out to remind you select a cell to place the split value, here select H2 for instance. See screenshot:
doc kutools split cells 3

4. Then the IP addresses have been split to two parts, one part includes first 9 character, the other includes last two characters.
doc kutools split cells 4

5. And select the list of first part with includes first 9 characters, and click Kutools > Select > Select Duplicate & Unique Cells. See screenshot:
doc kutools select duplicate unique cells 1

6. And in the Select Duplicate & Unique Cells dialog, check All duplicates (Including 1st one) option, and you also can format a different background or font color for the duplicates. See screenshot:
doc kutools select duplicate unique cells 2

7. Click Ok, a dialog pops out to tell you the number of duplicates. Now the duplicate IP addresses have been selected and format with colors. See screenshot:
doc kutools select duplicate unique cells 3

The Best Office Productivity Tools

Kutools for Excel Solves Most of Your Problems, and Increases Your Productivity by 80%

  • Reuse: Quickly insert complex formulas, charts and anything that you have used before; Encrypt Cells with password; Create Mailing List and send emails...
  • Super Formula Bar (easily edit multiple lines of text and formula); Reading Layout (easily read and edit large numbers of cells); Paste to Filtered Range...
  • Merge Cells/Rows/Columns without losing Data; Split Cells Content; Combine Duplicate Rows/Columns... Prevent Duplicate Cells; Compare Ranges...
  • Select Duplicate or Unique Rows; Select Blank Rows (all cells are empty); Super Find and Fuzzy Find in Many Workbooks; Random Select...
  • Exact Copy Multiple Cells without changing formula reference; Auto Create References to Multiple Sheets; Insert Bullets, Check Boxes and more...
  • Extract Text, Add Text, Remove by Position, Remove Space; Create and Print Paging Subtotals; Convert Between Cells Content and Comments...
  • Super Filter (save and apply filter schemes to other sheets); Advanced Sort by month/week/day, frequency and more; Special Filter by bold, italic...
  • Combine Workbooks and WorkSheets; Merge Tables based on key columns; Split Data into Multiple Sheets; Batch Convert xls, xlsx and PDF...
  • More than 300 powerful features. Supports Office/Excel 2007-2019 and 365. Supports all languages. Easy deploying in your enterprise or organization. Full features 30-day free trial. 60-day money back guarantee.
kte tab 201905

Office Tab Brings Tabbed interface to Office, and Make Your Work Much Easier

  • Enable tabbed editing and reading in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, Access, Visio and Project.
  • Open and create multiple documents in new tabs of the same window, rather than in new windows.
  • Increases your productivity by 50%, and reduces hundreds of mouse clicks for you every day!
officetab bottom
Say something here...
symbols left.
You are guest ( Sign Up? )
or post as a guest, but your post won't be published automatically.
Loading comment... The comment will be refreshed after 00:00.
  • To post as a guest, your comment is unpublished.
    Gopal · 5 months ago
    very nice information, helpful to identify the partial duplicates
  • To post as a guest, your comment is unpublished.
    Robert · 2 years ago
    The information you provide is awesome. You often rank in the top 3 results on Google for the solutions I'm trying to find. Using your site drives me nuts though because I can't tell what is ads for your product and what is part of the solution. It drives me so nuts that I often leave your site to find the solution somewhere less frustrating. There's nothing separating the ads from the article and everything is the same font.
    • To post as a guest, your comment is unpublished.
      Sunny · 2 years ago
      Thank you for you support firstly. All parts in the article are for solving the problems, but only in different ways. The Ad you mean just the functions we developer which may do better while solving the same problems, I hope you could like them. Sorry to make you nuts.