delete almost duplicate entries

[biodand]

Please help if you can. I don't know if this can be done or not, but here's the problem. I have a very long list of info (thousands of rows) with multiple columns of info. The end user continues to recieve and enter new data as a new row. Sometimes that row of info is the same serial # in column A as well as other columns, the only difference in the entries is that the second or third time the serial # is entered it has more info added each time in several previously empty columns. Is there a way to delete the duplicate row(s) with incomplete data? Thanks a bunch folks. This board is great.

[Chris Davison]

here's something that will alert you to any duplicates but won't actually delete anything.... I'll leave this to the VBA coding guys n gals, although if nothing comes through you can at least manually delete the duplicate rows....

select A1

goto format, conditional formatting

choose "formula is" instead of "cell value is" and enter the following formula :

=COUNTIF(A:A,A1)>1

now select a red background for when this is true : format, patterns, Ferrari red

and okay out

now click your format painter button into cell a1 and then click again on column A column header (thus pasting the format to the entire column)

this should get you started and alert you to any duplicates, at which point you can invoke any VBA coding solutions that will follow this that will actually delete the duplicates

(sorry VBA guys, I'm niaivly assuming we'd only want to run any coding when it's required rather than kicking in automatically...)