The Description column contains all of the places we made purchases. Many of these places appear more than once. We want a list of where we shop but we aren't concerned about how often we visit each store. We can use the Remove Duplicates dialog box to eliminate these duplicate values.
When duplicate values are removed, they are not simply hidden. They are deleted from the worksheet and can only be recovered by undoing the action.
If you are beginning this course at this point, you will need to copy the practice workbook to your Google Drive.
Right-Click Copy practice workbook, Click Open link in new window
The file begins to open in a new window of the web browser. Before the document will open and can be edited, we need to make a copy of it.
Move to the new browser window.
Click 
A copy of the file is now open and, by default, is saved in your Google Drive. The filename now has the words "Copy of" at the beginning.
To begin removing duplicate values, let's open the Remove Duplicates dialog box.
We will be working in the March worksheet.
Click Data, Point Data cleanup, Click Remove duplicates
The Remove duplicates dialog box opens:
This dialog box allows us to choose the columns we want to analyze. By default, the "Data has a header row" checkbox isn't checked. Therefore, the columns aren't labeled with their headings but instead the column letters.
Before we remove any duplicate values, let's confirm that the data has a header row.
Click the Data has header row checkbox
The list of columns now shows the headings in addition to the column letters.
We want to remove duplicate values from the Description column. We will deselect the other columns.
Click the Select all checkbox
Click the Column C - Description checkbox
Click 
An alert appears letting us know that 45 duplicate values were removed and 69 unique values remain.
Click 
Take a moment to examine the remaining values. While there are no duplicate values, there are some descriptions that aren't purchases such as the previous balance, payments, and refunds. To remove these, we'll filter the Purchase column and remove the blank values.
Click Data, Click Create a filter
There are now small filter icons next to each column heading.
Click 
Click the (Blanks) value checkbox, Click
The blank values have been filtered and are now hidden.
Let's use another filter to see just the place we purchased groceries.
Click 
Click Clear
To select only the Groceries category,Click Groceries, Click
We now see the four places we purchased groceries in the month of March.
