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Highlighting duplicates in Excel refers to the process of identifying and visually differentiating duplicate values in a selected range of data. However, if the first instance of a duplicate value is already highlighted, it may become difficult to distinguish it from the rest. To avoid this, one can use the conditional formatting feature in Excel to highlight duplicates, except for the first instance. This will make it easier to analyze and manage the data, as the first instance will remain unhighlighted while the rest will be visually highlighted for easy identification.
Excel: Highlight Duplicates Except First Instance
To highlight duplicate values in Excel except for the first instance, you can use the New Rule option under the Conditional Formatting dropdown menu within the Home tab.
The following example shows how to use this option in practice.
Example: Highlight Duplicates Except First Instance in Excel
Suppose we have the following column in Excel that contains the names of various basketball teams:
Now suppose that we would like to highlight each of the duplicate team names in column A except for the first instance.
To do so, highlight the cells in the range A2:A12, then click the Conditional Formatting dropdown menu on the Home tab and then click New Rule:
In the new window that appears, click Use a formula to determine which cells to format, then type =COUNTIF($A$2:$A2, A2)>1 in the box, then click the Format button and choose a fill color to use.
Once we press OK, all of the duplicate team names in column A except for the first instance will be highlighted:
We can see that each of the duplicate team names except for the first instance have been highlighted.
For example, the first instance of “Mavs” is not highlighted but every other occurrence of “Mavs” is highlighted:
Note: We chose to use a light green fill for the conditional formatting in this example, but you can choose any color and style you’d like for the conditional formatting.
Additional Resources
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common operations in Excel: