How to Compare Two Columns and Delete Duplicates in Excel Last Updated : 01 Jul, 2025 Comments Improve Suggest changes Like Article Like Report Facing redundant data in your Excel and don't know how to compare two columns so you can easily de-duplicate Excel? Explore this guide to get the step-by-step instructions to compare two columns and delete duplicate data. Here you will learn multiple ways, like the equal operator, IF() function, and EXACT(), to find the duplicate.How to Compare Two Columns in Excel?In the upcoming section, we are going to discuss all possible method to compare two columns, so explore the methods and choose the right one for your Excel duplicate.Compare Two Colums Using Equal OpComparing two columns in MS ExcelFollow the following steps to compare two columns in Excel:Note: This tutorial is for MS Excel 2013. Steps can be different or the same for other versions of Excel.Step 1: Open the Excel file on which you want to compare the columns. For Example, your data can look like thisStep 2: Select the columns and go to the Home tab > Style group> Conditional Formatting i.e first click on Home tab, then go to Style group and then select Conditional Formatting (as shown in the image below). Conditional formatting allows users to automatically apply formattings such as changing colors, data bars, and icons in the cells based on cell value.Step 3: After clicking on Conditional Formatting, a drop-down menu will appear. From the menu ribbon select the Highlight Cells Rules Step 4: After selecting Highlight Cell Rule another drop down will appear and, select Duplicate ValuesStep 5: After selecting Duplicate Values, a dialogue box (given below) will appear. In the first space fill Duplicate and in the other space fill the color options that you want to duplicate values to be highlighted in. And click OK. The purpose of this step is to highlight the duplicate values. Step 6: After clicking OK. The duplicated values are highlighted. Removing Duplicate ValuesStep 1: We'll be adding a filter to columns A and B and for that go to Home Tab> Editing Group> Sort & Filter. Here, Sort & Filter will help to apply various filters such as sort in ascending, descending order and sort by color, and much more.Step 2: After clicking on Sort & Filter, a dialogue box will appear (as shown below). From the dialogue box, select FilterStep 3: You'll see a downward arrow in the first cell of all the selected columns. After clicking on the downward arrow, a dialogue box will appear(as shown below). Select Filter by Color option. Step 4: In the Filter by Color, select Filter by Cell Color. Remember, here the default color is taken, if you want to take a different color then choose that cell color. And then press OK.The result will look like this. The duplicate values are highlighted in Column A because the filter is applied to Column A and if you want to highlight the duplicate values from column B, then apply the filter in Column B.Step 5: Select the cells from Column A that are colored and right-click, a dialogue box will appear(as shown below) and from the dialogue box select Clear ContentsAll the duplicate contents will be deleted. Comment More infoAdvertise with us Next Article How to Find Duplicate Values in Excel Using VLOOKUP S sakshiravindrasinghal Follow Improve Article Tags : Excel Geeks Premier League News Microsoft Office Geeks-Premier-League-2022 Excel - Advanced ExcelGuide +2 More Similar Reads MS Excel Tutorial - Learn Excel Online Free Excel, one of the powerful spreadsheet programs for managing large datasets, performing calculations, and creating visualizations for data analysis. 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