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Old 09-25-2009, 01:58 PM   #1971
SteveDallas
Your Bartender
 
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Philly Burbs, PA
Posts: 7,651
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shawnee123 View Post
grumble grumble
If it makes you feel better, I'm still inflicting Office 2000 on my users. (Have you seen my Wikipedia page??)

There are different ways to do this, of course. Quick & Dirty? Here's what I'd do.
  1. Sort by SSN. (We'll assume they're all in the same format.)
  2. You now have all the duplicates next to each other. You can look to see where they are if you only have a dozen or so records. Since I know you have a bajillion times that many, what you want to do is go to a free column over on the right and put in a formula:
    Code:
    =if(a2=a3,"DUPE","")
    where column a is the column of SSNs, row 2 is the row you're typing the formula on, and row 3 is the next row down. If you auto-fill this forumla down the column, you'll end up with the word "DUPE" on every row for which the SSN matches the SSN on the following row.
  3. Now you can use the Data -> Filter -> Advanced filter to copy only the records that say DUPE in your extra column to another range on the worksheet. (Simply sorting on the column won't work; that will put the SSNs out of order and make the formula you put in useless.)

P.S. I know you're aware of the security risks inherent in carrying the information out on a thumb drive . . .
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