Checking For Duplicates

[Sproutstick]

Anyone have any idea how I would identify duplicate entries on an Excel sheet or within an Access database?  Each entry has an individual reference number but there are some duplicates.  Please help!!!!! 

[Kerplunk]

For access go here http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/assistance/HA010345581033.aspx for excel just sort the columns alphabetically or use auto filter to filter the columns.

[Sproutstick]

Thanks but there's no point in sorting them numerically because I have about 10,000 seperate reference numbers that I need to check for duplication.  It would take me forever so I am looking for more of a quick-fix really!!

[stevie21]

In Access you can run an SQL query to find entries which are duplicated. There may be more user friendly ways of doing this but if you enter your own column names (e.g. the column that you're looking for duplication in may be called "customerRef") in place of my examples this *may* work: select * from TABLENAME alias1 inner join TABLENAME alias2 on alias1.customerRef= alias2.customerRef; This translates as "show all info in the table where the first customerRef that you find has a match elsewhere in the table"

[stevie21]

Apparently my browser doesn't have the new text editor facility so my nicely spaced reply is a bit garbled: feel free to mail me at this username AT gmail.com