Blank rows and repeated rows make spreadsheets harder to sort, filter, and analyze. Excel can remove both in bulk, which is safer than right-clicking rows one at a time through a large sheet.
Does this affect you?
Use this for Excel for Microsoft 365, Excel 2021, and Excel 2019 on Windows or Mac when imported data, shared edits, or copy-paste work leaves empty lines or duplicate records.
Delete all blank rows at once
Go To Special selects blanks inside your chosen range.
- Select the full data range, including blank rows between records.
- Press Ctrl+G on Windows or Cmd+G on Mac.
- Click Special.
- Choose Blanks and click OK.
- Right-click one highlighted blank cell and choose Delete.
- Choose Entire row and click OK.
Check the result carefully. Rows with one blank cell but data elsewhere are not fully blank and may need a different cleanup approach.
Remove duplicate rows
Excel keeps the first matching row and removes later duplicates.
- Select the data range, including the header row.
- Open the Data tab.
- Click Remove Duplicates.
- Check My data has headers if the first row contains labels.
- Select the columns Excel should compare. Leave all checked for exact duplicate rows, or choose one key column such as Email.
- Click OK and read the summary.
More control
Put the best duplicate first
Because Excel keeps the first duplicate it finds, sort or arrange records before removal if one version is more complete than another.
Highlight duplicates before deleting
Use Home > Conditional Formatting > Highlight Cells Rules > Duplicate Values to review repeated values before removing them.
Save a copy first
Ctrl+Z can undo removal immediately, but after saving and closing, deleted rows are much harder to recover. Save a backup before major cleanup.
Tables work too
Excel Tables support Remove Duplicates and Go To Special, but select the table body carefully so headers are not treated as data.
Google Sheets has similar cleanup
In Google Sheets, use Data > Data cleanup > Remove duplicates. Blank rows can be found by sorting or filtering blanks.
Sources
- Microsoft Support – Find and remove duplicates (2025)
- Microsoft Support – Delete or remove a cell, row, or column (2025)
- Microsoft Support – Filter for unique values or remove duplicate values (2025)