Excel: How to Remove Duplicate Rows Based on One Column

Often you may want to remove duplicate rows based on one column in Excel.

Fortunately this is easy to do using the Remove Duplicates function within the Data tab.

The following example shows how to use this function in practice.

Example: Remove Duplicates Based on One Column in Excel

Suppose we have the following dataset in Excel that contains information about various basketball players:

Notice that there are several duplicate values in the Team column.

To remove rows that have duplicate values in the Team column, highlight the cell range A1:C11 and then click the Data tab along the top ribbon and then click Remove Duplicates:

In the new window that appears, make sure the box is checked next to My data has headers and make sure that only the box next to Team is checked:

Once you click OK, the rows with duplicate values in the Team column will automatically be removed:

Excel tells us that 7 duplicate rows were found and removed and that 3 unique rows remain.

Notice that none of the remaining rows have duplicate values in the Team column.

Also notice that the row with the first occurrence of each unique team name is kept.

For example:

The row with Mavs, 22 points and 7 assists is the first row in the dataset with “Mavs” in the Team column.
The row with Spurs, 18 points and 4 assists is the first row in the dataset with “Spurs” in the Team column.

And so on.