How to use built-in Excel features to find duplicates by Susan Harkins.
From the post:
Duplicate values aren’t bad. In fact, most are necessary. However, duplicate records can skew reporting and analysis. Whether you’re finding duplicates in a single column or looking for duplicate records, Excel can do most of the work for you. In this article, I’ll show you easy ways to find duplicates by applying advanced filtering options and conditional formatting rules. First, we’ll define the term duplicate—it isn’t ambiguous, but context determines its meaning. Then, we’ll use Excel’s built-in features to find duplicates.
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If the first paragraph hadn’t caught my attention, then:
Your definition of duplicate will depend on the business rule you’re applying.
certainly would have!
The same rule holds true for subject identity. It really depends on the business rule (read requirement) for your analysis.
In some cases subject may appear as topics/proxies but be ignored. Or their associations with other subjects will be ignored.
Or for some purposes, what were separate topics/proxies may form group subjects with demographic characteristics such as age, gender, voting status, etc.
If you are required to use Excel and bedeviled by duplicates, you will find this post quite useful.