Prevent Duplicate Copy Row

It would be helpful to have a feature that prevents duplicate rows when using the “Copy Row” option. Sometimes rows get copied multiple times by mistake, causing duplicate data.

Adding a check to avoid duplicates would improve data accuracy and reduce manual cleanup.

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Comments

Paul Newcome

You can set a second action after a copy/move row action in an automation. If you include a helper column called (for example) "Copied", you can make the second action a change cell automation and change the cell to read "Copied" then include a condition in the automation to only run on rows where this helper column is blank.

v.k.longoria

I agree. We can use a conditional format to highlight duplicates, so for now I have a checkbox column that is marked if there is a duplicate entry so I can manually remove it.

Paul Newcome

@v.k.longoria You can use the method above to automatically mark rows that have been copied and include a condition in your automation to prevent rows from being duplicated.

Amark

I do agree about the automation but what if the rows are copied multiple times

Paul Newcome

@Amark Cleaning up already duplicated rows varies in how complicated it can be. My suggestion was not for cleaning them up. It is for preventing them from being duplicated in the first place.

When I have duplicated rows I need to clean up, I use a helper column with a COUNTIFS to count how many rows are matched. I then apply a filter for rows where this helper column is greater than one and start deleting from there.

The COUNTIFS used varies based on what column(s) and data you have in your sheet. If you have some sort of unique identifier in the source, your COUNTIFS only needs to count this column. Otherwise, you would need to come up with a COUNTIFS that looks at a series of columns that indicate duplicated rows if all of the columns match.

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