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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. But sometimes, you want the blank cells to replace the duplicate values, in this situation, the Remove Duplicate command will not work. This article is going to guide you remove duplicates and replace with blank cells in Excel.

Remove duplicates and replace with blank cells with formulas
Remove duplicates and replace with blank cells with Kutools for Excel

Remove duplicates and replace with blank cells with formulas

If there are some duplicate data in a range, the following two formulas will guide you to replace duplicates with blanks in the range. 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.

Remove duplicates and replace with blank cells with Kutools for Excel

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 only press the Delete key in the keybord to remove them. 

Before applying Kutools for Excel, please download and install it firstly.

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:

  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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Comments (16)
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GT
GT
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how to retain the duplicated value on top? because it always stay at the bottom
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BenL
BenL     GT
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I was having the same issue and used the following formula to display the first duplicated value but no others: =IF(A2="","",IF(COUNTIF($A$2:$A$286,A2)=(COUNTIF(A2:A286,A2)),A2,"")) I had 286 rows of data in the sheet I was working with. Hope this helps!
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Jac
Jac     BenL
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Thanks for sharing this! It saved me hours!
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Oliver
Oliver     BenL
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Fantastic hint. That was exactly what I was looking for. You made my day!
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ZOHRA
ZOHRA     BenL
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Thanks it helped me a lot. what i wanted to find out your formula exactly got me that output. Thanks a lot again.
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Petter
Petter
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Please note that on office for mac semicolon is used to separate variables in function calls, which gives you =IF(A2="";"";IF(COUNTIF($A2:A999;A2)=1;A2;""))
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Satyam
Satyam
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Use the following VBA code Sub RemoveDupes() Dim X As Long For X = 1 To Range("A" & Rows.Count).End(xlUp).Row If Application.WorksheetFunction.CountIf(Range("A1:A" & X), Range("A" & X).Text) > 1 Then Rows(X).ClearContents Next End Sub It works for me. Thanks to Blade Hunter [url]http://www.mrexcel.com/forum/excel-questions/768398-how-remove-duplicates-replace-blank-cells-excel.html#post3766476[/url]
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Nat
Nat
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You're a genius!!!! Just saved me half a day :)
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Dib
Dib
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Hi really need help, i having the same problem however i need the first data and clear out any succeeding duplicates. Like if i have 5 "jane" in a range, i would need 1 "jane"(the very first in line) and delete the rest. I see with the given solution that it actually delete all 5 "jane"s.
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Murali
Murali
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Hi, Is there any formula to remove duplicates and replace it with another values in the same sheet
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SACHIN
SACHIN
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You have shown formula with very clarity, Thereby I got help with easily. If you have any link in which that I can get & search mostly formula by there link. :-)
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Sayan
Sayan
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thankx a ton...saved a lot of tym...
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Laxmiprasad
Laxmiprasad
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This small formula also works : =IF(COUNTIF($A$2:A2,A2)=1,A2,"").. Just drag it
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Jo
Jo
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formula returned blank cells
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Navyasree Janjirala
Navyasree Janjirala
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Is there anyway where we could keep the duplicated cell and replace value with a zero??

Say: There are 2 rows in our worksheet with 2 columns "name", "value". It should not remove the name instead replace the value with 0.

Excel 10 ------ Excel 10
Excel 10 ------ Excel 0
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AK
AK
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=IF(A2="","",IF(COUNTIF($A2:A15,A2)=1,A2,""))

This doesnt seem to work on Large texts cells. throws #VALUE! Errror


Any solution for that?
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