How to Find and Remove Duplicate Rows in Smartsheet
Smartsheet has no built-in "remove duplicates" button, so duplicate rows tend to pile up quietly and inflate counts, reports and rollups. The standard manual fix is a helper column with a COUNTIF formula; here is how to set it up, where it gets tedious, and the automatic alternative.
Flag duplicates with a COUNTIF helper column
Add a new column (call it "Duplicate?") and use COUNTIF to count how often each row's key value appears in its column. For a sheet keyed on an Order ID column:
- Insert a helper column next to your data.
- In its first cell enter:
=IF([Order ID]@row = "", "", IF(COUNTIF([Order ID]:[Order ID], [Order ID]@row) > 1, "Duplicate", "Unique")) - Drag-fill the formula down the column (or convert it to a column formula so new rows inherit it).
- Create a filter where the helper column equals "Duplicate" to see every duplicated row together.
- Review the filtered rows and delete the copies you don't want to keep.
Where the manual method gets painful
The formula flags every copy — including the one you want to keep — so you still have to eyeball each group and decide which row survives before deleting the rest by hand.
If a duplicate is defined by several columns together (say Name + Email), you need COUNTIFS or a concatenated helper column, and the formula grows accordingly. You can delete the helper column once a one-off cleanup is done; keep it as a column formula only if you want ongoing detection, in which case the review becomes a recurring chore every time new rows arrive. One gotcha: COUNTIF also counts blank cells, so rows with an empty key would flag each other — the leading blank check in the formula above skips them.
Remove duplicates automatically
Our Deduplicate tool does the whole loop in one pass: you pick the sheet and the columns that define a match, it finds the duplicate rows, keeps the first occurrence (or the last, if you prefer), and shows you exactly which rows would be deleted before anything is removed. Rows whose key columns are all blank are skipped rather than flagged as copies of each other — the COUNTIF trap above. It works one sheet at a time. No helper columns, no formulas, and it is just as fast the tenth time as the first.
Do it in one pass instead
Find and delete duplicate rows in a Smartsheet automatically, matched on the columns you choose, with a preview before anything is removed.
Try Deduplicate FreeFrequently asked questions
Does Smartsheet have a built-in remove-duplicates feature?
No. The grid has no native dedupe button — the common workaround is a helper column with a COUNTIF formula, followed by filtering and deleting rows by hand, or using a bulk tool that automates the pass.
How do I find duplicates across multiple columns?
With formulas you need COUNTIFS across each column, or a helper column that concatenates the values before counting. A dedupe tool lets you simply tick the columns that define a match.
How do I keep one copy and delete the rest?
A COUNTIF helper flags every copy including the original, so manually you must pick survivors yourself. The Deduplicate tool keeps the first occurrence of each group automatically — or the last, if you choose — and previews exactly which rows will be removed.