How to Combine Duplicates in Excel Pivot Table: Step-by-Step Guide

Are you working with a large dataset in Microsoft Excel and need to create a pivot table to analyze the data, but are finding that there are duplicate values causing issues? Combining duplicates in an Excel pivot table is a common task that can help clean up your data and make your pivot tables easier to read and interpret. In this article, we’ll walk through step-by-step how to identify and combine duplicate values in a pivot table using Excel’s built-in tools.

Why Combine Duplicates in a Pivot Table?

Pivot tables are an incredibly useful tool in Excel for summarizing, exploring, and presenting data. They allow you to quickly aggregate and slice data in different ways, revealing insights that might be hard to see in a raw dataset. However, when your source data contains duplicate entries, it can lead to confusion and inaccuracies in the pivot table results.

Some common reasons you may need to combine duplicates include:

• Multiple spellings or variations of the same value (e.g. “USA” and “United States”)
• Inconsistent capitalization or punctuation (e.g. “John Smith” and “john smith”)
• Duplicated rows in the source data (e.g. the same record entered multiple times)

Combining these duplicates will ensure that the pivot table treats them as a single value, rolling up the results correctly. This provides a cleaner, more accurate view of your data and allows you to draw the right conclusions.

Step 1: Identify the Duplicate Values

The first step is to identify which pivot table fields contain duplicate values that need to be combined. This is important because you may have duplicates in some fields (like customer names or regions) but not others (like numeric ID fields). To identify the duplicates:

1. Create your pivot table as usual, selecting all the relevant fields from your source data
2. Look at the Row Labels or Column Labels area of the pivot table and scan for any repeated values
3. Make note of which field(s) the duplicates appear in

In our example, let’s say we have a pivot table summarizing sales data, with “Region” as a row label. We notice that “USA”, “United States”, “US”, and “America” all appear as separate values, when they should really be treated as the same thing.

Step 2: Create a Mapping Table

To combine the duplicate entries, we need to provide Excel with a mapping that tells it which values should be treated as the same. We’ll do this in a separate worksheet to keep things organized:

1. Create a new worksheet in your workbook and name it something like “Mapping”
2. In column A, enter all the unique values for the field you want to combine duplicates for, including any variations you found
3. In column B, enter the standardized value that each unique value should map to – this is the value you want to appear in your final pivot table

Here’s what the mapping table might look like for our “Region” example:

By creating this mapping, we’re telling Excel that all four of those original values should be treated as “United States” in the pivot table.

Step 3: Perform the Mapping with VLOOKUP

Now that we have our mapping table set up, we can use Excel’s VLOOKUP function to actually map the original values to the standardized values in our source data:

1. Go back to your source data worksheet (not the pivot table sheet)
2. Insert a new column next to the one you want to standardize – you can name it something like “Standardized Region”
3. In the first cell of the new column, enter a VLOOKUP formula to map each original value to its standardized equivalent. The formula will look something like this: =VLOOKUP([original value cell], Mapping!$A$2:$B$[last row number], 2, FALSE) Replace [original value cell] with the cell reference for the first original value, and [last row number] with the row number of the last mapping entry.
4. Copy the VLOOKUP formula down to all rows in your data by double-clicking the small square in the bottom-right corner of the cell, or dragging it down

The VLOOKUP will look at each original value, try to find it in the first column of the mapping table, and return the corresponding standardized value from the second column. If no match is found, it will return an #N/A error.

Step 4: Refresh the Pivot Table

With the standardized values now in place, the final step is to update your pivot table to use the new mapped field instead of the original:

1. Go to your pivot table worksheet
2. In the Pivot Table Fields pane, remove the original field with the duplicates by unchecking it or dragging it out
3. Add the new standardized field you created with VLOOKUP by checking it or dragging it into the rows/columns area
4. Refresh the pivot table data to see the changes by right-clicking the pivot table and selecting Refresh

The duplicates should now be combined under the standardized value in your pivot table. In our example, all the variations of “United States” will be rolled up together in the “Region” field, giving a clearer picture of the sales data.

Tips for Preventing Duplicates

While it’s useful to know how to fix duplicates in a pivot table after the fact, ideally you’ll want to minimize them occurring in the first place. Here are some tips for preventing duplicates in your source data:

• Set up data validation rules to ensure consistency in data entry – for example, only allowing values from a predefined list for fields like region or category
• Use drop-downs or selection lists for fields that have a known set of values, rather than relying on manual text entry
• If importing data from another system, see if you can standardize the values in the source system first before bringing them into Excel
• Train users who enter data on the importance of consistency and using the correct standard values

By catching potential duplicates at the data entry stage, you can save yourself cleanup work later on.

Combining Duplicates from Multiple Fields

In some cases, you may need to combine duplicates across multiple fields, not just one. For example, you might have duplicates in a combination of “First Name” and “Last Name” fields, where “John Smith” and “J. Smith” should be treated as the same person.

The process for combining multi-field duplicates is similar to the single-field case, but with a few tweaks:

1. In your mapping table, create one column for each original field you want to combine, plus one for the standardized value
2. Enter all the unique combinations of original field values in these columns, along with the standardized value they should map to
3. In your VLOOKUP formula, concatenate the original field values together to match against the mapping table key – for example: =VLOOKUP([first name cell]&[last name cell], Mapping!$A$2:$D$[last row], 4, FALSE) The & operator joins the values together into a single lookup key.

This tells Excel to look for an exact match of the combined first and last name values in the mapping table, and return the corresponding standardized value.

Advanced Techniques: Fuzzy Matching

The standard VLOOKUP method works well when you have an exact match between the original and standardized values. But what if the duplicates are less exact, like misspellings or partial matches?

In this case, you may need to use fuzzy matching techniques. One option is to use VLOOKUP with wildcards, which allows matching on partial text using the * character. For example:

=VLOOKUP("*"&[original value cell]&"*", Mapping!$A$2:$B$[last row], 2, FALSE)

This will match any standardized value that contains the original value text anywhere within it, useful for catching things like “United States” and “United States of America”.

For more advanced fuzzy matching, you can explore other Excel functions like IFERROR with MATCH, or use a third-party fuzzy lookup add-in. These can help match values that are similar but not exactly the same, like misspellings or abbreviations.

Final Thoughts

Duplicate values in pivot tables can skew results and make it harder to get meaningful insights from your data. By combining these duplicates into standardized values, you can ensure your pivot tables are as accurate and useful as possible.

The process involves identifying the duplicates, setting up a mapping table, using VLOOKUP to standardize the values in your source data, and then refreshing the pivot table to use the new field. With a bit of planning and these techniques, you can clean up and combine duplicates in any pivot table.

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Vaishvi Desai

Vaishvi Desai is the founder of Excelsamurai and a passionate Excel enthusiast with years of experience in data analysis and spreadsheet management. With a mission to help others harness the power of Excel, Vaishvi shares her expertise through concise, easy-to-follow tutorials on shortcuts, formulas, Pivot Tables, and VBA.