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 them 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. 

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

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