Removing duplicates in Excel - Cell-by-Cell Formula Trace

Concept Flow

A
1 Name
2 Alice
3 Bob
4 Alice
5 Charlie
6 Bob
7 David

Formula: =UNIQUE(A2:A7)

Output:
B
1 Unique Names
2 Alice
3 Bob
4 Charlie
5 David

We start with a list of names in column A that contains duplicates. The UNIQUE function is applied to the range A2:A7 to remove duplicates and output only unique names in column B.

Formula

=UNIQUE(A2:A7)

This formula takes the range A2:A7 and returns a list of unique names, removing any duplicates and keeping only the first occurrence of each name.

Step-by-Step Trace

Step	Expression	Evaluates To	Explanation
1	A2:A7	["Alice", "Bob", "Alice", "Charlie", "Bob", "David"]	This is the range of names including duplicates.
2	UNIQUE(["Alice", "Bob", "Alice", "Charlie", "Bob", "David"])	["Alice", "Bob", "Charlie", "David"]	UNIQUE removes duplicate names, keeping only the first occurrence.

The final output is a list of unique names without duplicates.

Variable Tracker

Variable	Value
A2:A7	["Alice", "Bob", "Alice", "Charlie", "Bob", "David"]
UNIQUE(A2:A7)	["Alice", "Bob", "Charlie", "David"]

Key Moments

What does the UNIQUE function do?

Which cells are referenced by the formula?

What is the output value in cell B4?

Sheet Trace Quiz - 3 Questions

What does the UNIQUE function do with the list of names?

A Removes duplicate names and keeps only the first occurrence

B Sorts the names alphabetically

C Counts how many times each name appears

D Reverses the order of the names

Key Result

The UNIQUE function in Excel removes duplicate entries from a range and returns only the first occurrence of each unique value.

Transcript

We have a list of names in column A with duplicates. By using the formula =UNIQUE(A2:A7), Excel scans the range A2 to A7 and extracts only unique names. The duplicates are removed, and the unique names are listed starting in cell B2. This helps to clean data by removing repeated entries easily.