Find Duplicate Rows
The Find Duplicate Rows tool is a unified solution to find, highlight, and manage duplicate rows in your Google Sheets™ spreadsheet. It uses a find-first pattern where you first identify duplicate rows, review them in a results window, then apply actions.
How to Use Find Duplicate Rows
Section titled “How to Use Find Duplicate Rows”-
Open the Find Duplicate Rows feature Navigate through the Google Workspace™ menu:
Extensions>Text To Table Converter>Mega Tools>Find Duplicate Rows. -
Select your range Choose where to search for duplicates:
- Selection - Search only within your currently selected range
- Current Sheet - Search the entire active sheet
- All Sheets - Search across all sheets in your spreadsheet
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Configure options (optional) Click the caret button to expand the options panel:
- Find type: Select ‘duplicates’ (default) or ‘unique’ rows
- Columns to check: Select specific columns to compare (default: all columns)
- Data has headers: Checkbox to indicate if the first row contains headers (default: checked)
- Keep occurrence: Choose to keep first occurrence (default) or last occurrence when deleting
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Find duplicates Click the main “Find Duplicates” button to search for duplicate rows.
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Review results The results window displays:
- Count of duplicate rows found
- Table showing: Checkbox | Row location (sheet!A5:Z5) | Type badge (“Duplicate Row”)
- Results are clickable to navigate to the row (selects full row)
- Collapsible results section with toggle button
- Tooltips showing row content preview on hover
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Select duplicate rows Use checkboxes to select specific duplicate rows you want to manage.
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Apply actions to selected rows Choose an action to apply:
Highlight - Highlights selected rows with color options:
- Single color mode: All selected rows highlighted with one color (default: yellow)
- Multi-color mode: Different duplicate groups highlighted with different colors, interpolated between min and max colors (default: red to green gradient)
- Color pickers available for customization
Delete - Deletes selected rows with options:
- Keep first result row (checkbox)
- Create backup (checkbox) - Creates a backup sheet before deletion
Mark status - Adds a status column and marks selected rows as “Duplicate Row”
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View result message After applying an action, a status message confirms what was done.
Options and Defaults
Section titled “Options and Defaults”- Find type: Duplicates (default) or Unique rows
- Columns to check: All columns (default) or specific column selection
- Data has headers: Checked by default
- Keep occurrence: First occurrence (default) or Last occurrence
- Highlight scheme:
- Single color mode (default: yellow
#FFEB3B) - Multi-color mode (default: red
#f44336→ green#4caf50gradient)
- Single color mode (default: yellow
Use Cases
Section titled “Use Cases”- Data cleaning - Identify and remove duplicate entries from your dataset
- Quality control - Find duplicate records that shouldn’t exist
- Data analysis - Identify patterns in duplicate data
- Database preparation - Clean data before importing into databases
- Report generation - Ensure unique records in reports