How to remove duplicates and replace with blank cells in Excel?

Normally when you apply Remove Duplicates command in Excel, it removes the entire duplicate rows. However, sometimes you may want to replace duplicate values with blank cells. In this case, the Remove Duplicate command will not work. This article is going to guide you remove duplicates and replace them with blank cells in Excel.

Use formula to remove duplicates and replace with blank cells
Use Kutools for Excel to remove duplicates and replace with blank cells

Use formula to remove duplicates and replace with blank cells

If there are some duplicate data in a range, the following two formulas will guide you to replace them with blanks. Please do as follows:

1.Select a blank cell to output the result such as cell D2, enter the below formula into it and press the "Enter" key. 

=IF(A2="","",IF(COUNTIF($A2:A15,A2)=1,A2,""))

2. Select the result cell and then drag the fill handle across the range that you want to apply this formula.
Then you can see all duplicates (except the first one) are replaced with blanks. See screenshots:

Tip: If you need to replace all the duplicate values (include the first one) with blank cells and only keep the unique values in the range, the following formula can help you, and you will get the following results:

=IF(A2="", "", IF(COUNTIF(A$2:A$15,A2)>1,"",A2))

Note: You can change the cell references in above two formulas based on your needs.

Use Kutools for Excel to remove duplicates and replace with blank cells

The "Select Duplicate & Unique Cells" utility of Kutools for Excel can help you quickly select all duplicate cells in a range. After that, you can press the Delete key on your keyboard to remove them.

1. Select the range that you want to apply this utility.

2. Click "Kutools" > "Select "> "Select Duplicate & Unique Cells".

3. In the "Select Duplicate & Unique Cells" dialog box, select "Duplicates (Except 1 st one)" or "All duplicates (Including 1 st one)" as you need, and then click the "OK" button.

4. If you selected the "Duplicates (Except 1 st one)" option, all duplicate cells except the first duplicate one will be selected, and you can press the "Delete" key to remove them. See screenshots:

If you selected the "All duplicates (Including 1 st one)" option, all the duplicate cells (including the first duplicate) will be selected at once, then you can press the "Delete" key to remove them. See screenshots:

Related articles:

• Find unique values between two columns
• Find duplicate values in two columns
• Filter unique records from selected column