Advanced Filter for Similar Records

[rippledj]

Hello,

I new here and trying to solve a problem for my master's thesis.
I have a table of 40,000 litigation records that include Patent Number, Docket Number, and Filing Date
I want to eliminate duplicate records of docket number in the table, however the problem is that some of the records have the same docket number but don't have the same filing date, and therefore they will not be eliminated when I choose "unique records only". Can I eliminate duplicates based on only one column?

In this case I would just like excel to choose one of the records and hide the other record even though they are not perfect duplicates. It doesn't really matter which one is hidden or displayed.

Can anyone advise on how to do this?

Thanks Kindly,

[martindwilson]

Can I eliminate duplicates based on only one column?

yes use the remove duplicates option on that column

[tigertiger]

You should
+ add a column with fomula: = <Docket Number> & " ^ " &< Filing Date>
+ then, eliminate duplicates based on the added column
+ lastly, delete the whole the added column

[zxchan]

Looks very doable with Pivot table, If you can send sample data over, I can work it out.