What I have are a bunch of "unique values" - I know that they're unique, in the literal sense, but I also know that some of them (perhaps a large quantity) actually represent variants (and therefore duplicates) of the same data point. The "unique" identifiers are written as "##.####" as well as "##.####-A" or "##.####-#".

What I need to do is search the sheet (about 3000 entries) not for exact duplicates, but for things which match the first "##.####", regardless of whether they have anything following that first string of numbers.

This will help me identify places where the first entry has a count of 3, but then later, I subdivided the entry into "##.####-1" "-2" and "-3". If the count remains 3 in the first line, and then 1 in each case for the subdivided entries, then I've double counted those three things, and that's a serious problem. Additionally, because excel treats "##.####" as numeric, and "##.####-1" or "##.####-A" as text, none of the normal sorting mechanisms can put the potentially duplicating cells next to each other to compare them, so then I would like to figure out how to use some sort of script/formula with conditional formatting so that I can then highlight and filter the cells, and decide what to do with the duplicates.

By the way, in case it's not already clear, I've got no coding experience, and just a vague sense that what I'm asking should be possible somehow, I'm just not at all sure how to do it. Thanks in advance!