Hi,

I have been given a spreadsheet with about 16,000 rows of data, each
line including an alpha-numeric reference number. I have been asked to
easily flag up duplicates and have tried to do this with conditional
formatting using

=COUNTIF(Criteria!$A$1:$A$16000,A1)>1

but it seems this is for numbers only. Can anyone help a simple soul
like me get this straight so that rows with duplicated References (for
example "G092307223812W" ) can be easily picked out?

Much appreciated

On Oct 2, 3:05 pm, GillW <gill.webs...@virgin.net> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have been given a spreadsheet with about 16,000 rows of data, each
> line including an alpha-numeric reference number. I have been asked to
> easily flag up duplicates and have tried to do this with conditional
> formatting using
>
> =COUNTIF(Criteria!$A$1:$A$16000,A1)>1
>
> but it seems this is for numbers only. Can anyone help a simple soul
> like me get this straight so that rows with duplicated References (for
> example "G092307223812W" ) can be easily picked out?
>
> Much appreciated

Sorry - I forgot to say I'm using Excel 2002

This should work for text, too.

If you had trouble, you should post more details.

And personally, I'd use the same kind of formula in a new column (insert a new
column B). With 16000 rows, scrolling through the data looking for differences
in formatting doesn't appeal to me.

I'd apply data|filter|autofilter to that helper column so that I could filter to
see True's.



GillW wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I have been given a spreadsheet with about 16,000 rows of data, each
> line including an alpha-numeric reference number. I have been asked to
> easily flag up duplicates and have tried to do this with conditional
> formatting using
>
> =COUNTIF(Criteria!$A$1:$A$16000,A1)>1
>
> but it seems this is for numbers only. Can anyone help a simple soul
> like me get this straight so that rows with duplicated References (for
> example "G092307223812W" ) can be easily picked out?
>
> Much appreciated

--

Dave Peterson