Three ways duplicate records can fool a quick spreadsheet review

Duplicates are rarely as simple as two identical rows sitting next to each other.

A quick spreadsheet review can miss them for a few common reasons.

1. The same thing is written differently

Acme Supply Co. and ACME Supply Company may refer to the same business. So might records with different punctuation, abbreviations, spacing, or capitalization.

Exact-match tools are useful, but exact matching is only one kind of comparison.

2. Two records share one field but are not duplicates

The opposite problem happens too. Two locations may use the same main phone number. Several businesses can operate from the same building. A parent company and a subsidiary may share a mailing address.

One matching field is evidence, not proof.

3. The most important clue may be somewhere else

A record can look different until you compare another field: a domain name, product code, address component, source reference, or other piece of context.

That is why duplicate cleanup should be tied to the purpose of the dataset. The question is not only “Do these rows match?” It is “Should these records be treated as the same thing for this particular use?”

That small distinction can prevent a lot of bad assumptions later.