On 07:30 Wed 19 Sep     , Brian Barker wrote:
> At 21:52 18/09/2007 +0100, Joseph "John" K wrote:
>> Given a sheet of about 2000 rows with the first column containing numbers 
>> sorted into ascending order but with the same number sometimes appearing in 
>> more than one row, what is the easiest way to remove rows with the 
>> duplicated numbers leaving only one instance of each number. Columns 2 
>> onwards may differ row to row even if the cell in column 1 is the same. 
>> I've tried all sorts of ways to do this but seem to end up with something 
>> far too complex.
>
> I have two suggestions.
>

<snipped lines>

> In each case, of course, you would then need to delete duplicate rows 
> manually.  And again in each case, the marker would disappear from the other 
> duplicate as soon as you deleted one (or all but one) of them.  In the first 
> case, if you wanted a double check you could construct a cell somewhere to 
> count the number of instances of "Duplicate!", so that you could be sure 
> when you had removed all of them.

Thanks to Harold & Brian for the suggestions. 

Harold, for some reason I could not get the sheet to sort properly after
applying your formula, even making sure the sort column was formatted as
integer.

Brian, I really would rather not have to delete manually as I am trying
to automate this as much as possible. The sheet may eventually grow.

My final solution, although far from ideal, is to save the sheet as a
.csv file and run a one line shell script which deletes all rows where
there is a duplicate in column A and writes a .csv file with the unique
rows. Then I just import the new .csv file.

Probably won't work on windows as it uses awk :)
Perhaps in OO v3 this could be added.

Regards, John
-- 
It is often safer to be in chains than to be free.
Joseph K

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