Can excel get all names in a column and exclude duplicates?

You can use 'remove duplicates' (2007) or 'advanced filter' to get unique values

http://www.excelforum.com/excel-form...tatements.html
Take a look at this thread

Consider the following approach that uses the .Add method. Here are my assumptions.

Assumption 1: Your list of possibly repeated words resides entirely in Column A in a continuous range (i.e., there are no cells that are skipped or blank) and starts in Cell A1.

Assumption 2: The final list of unique (i.e., non-duplicated) words will be shown in Column B (starting in Cell B1).

Paste in the following code into a module and run the macro:

Sub RemoveDupes()

'Declare variables
Dim nodupes As New Collection
Dim siterange As Range
Dim cell As Range
Dim sites() As String
Dim s As Long

Application.ScreenUpdating = False

Columns("B:B").ClearContents
Set siterange = Range("A1").CurrentRegion

'Build nodupes collection
On Error Resume Next
For Each cell In siterange
    nodupes.Add cell.Value, CStr(cell.Value)
Next cell
On Error GoTo 0

'Dimensionalize and populate site vector
ReDim sites(1 To nodupes.Count)
For s = 1 To nodupes.Count
    sites(s) = nodupes(s)
Next s

'Transfer array to Column B
For s = 1 To UBound(sites)
    Cells(s, 2) = sites(s)
Next s

Application.ScreenUpdating = True

End Sub

Hope this helps.

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you can use a pivot table ,hide the grand total (right click ,hide)
then use 2 dynamic named ranges when you add new names refresh the pivot and the dropdown will update

Using the worksheet created by martindwilson, you can also create a dynamic named list from the Pivot Table a different way using this formula to be used in your Data Validation:

Formula:

=OFFSET(Sheet1!M2,0,0,COUNTA(Sheet1!M:M)-1,1)

I don't claim this to be better, only another option.

trouble with only one dynamic named range i found if the pivot updates either the names aren't added because the source range is fixed or if you make it larger than you have, the table includes a cell with "(blank)" written in it which doesnt move down when a new name added