How to find files with the same names. Find and remove duplicates in Microsoft Excel

Surely, any of us have duplicate files accumulated on our disk over time. Files in “Downloads” that you have downloaded several times, identical photographs and musical compositions lying in such depths that your hands simply cannot reach them. You can get rid of all this manually, but special utilities that search for identical files will work much faster for you.

A very popular “cleaner” that probably everyone has installed. Yes, it not only searches for system garbage and clears browser history and cookies, but also removes duplicate files.

Platforms: Windows, Mac.

Price: free, $24.95 for premium version.

The program searches for files with the same or similar names and identical content. Works well with music and can find identical music files even if they have different tags. In addition, dupeGuru can compare images to find not only identical, but simply similar photos.

Developed for Mac and Linux. The Windows version is no longer supported by the developer, but it can be downloaded from the official website - it is fully functional.

Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux.

An advanced file search application that, among other things, can remove duplicates. SearchMyFiles has flexible filters so you can customize your search results the way you want.

Platforms: Windows.

A popular Mac application that searches for the same or similar files and shows you the difference between them. Copies in “Photos”, in the iTunes music library - nothing will pass by Gemini 2. The developers have announced a smart duplicate search mechanism that remembers which files you leave and what you decide to delete.

Platforms: Mac.

Although AllDup is free, it does a lot. Searches for, deletes, copies and moves duplicate files, including identical audio recordings with different tags. There is a flexible search setting. Using the built-in viewer, you can examine files and choose what to delete.

Platforms: Windows.

Duplicate File Finder quickly and efficiently finds duplicate files. Provides an interesting opportunity to search for duplicates not only on the hard drive, but also on the local network. Can work with images and music, comparing both tags and content. The preview function will help you figure out what to really delete and what to leave. Unfortunately, quite a few options are not available in the free version.

Platforms: Windows.

Price: free, $29.95 for premium version.

A universal file manager that can do anything with your files. Including finding duplicate files. You can enable the search for copies option on the search parameters tab, in the same place where you specify other attributes of the searched files.

Platforms: Windows.

DupeGuru looks like the most attractive option. It's free, but it offers all the necessary features to rid your drive of accumulated junk. The only sad thing is that development of the Windows version has been stopped. For Windows users who don't want to pay for commercial alternatives, AllDup is a better choice. CCleaner and Total Commander are more universal and widespread solutions that are probably already installed on everyone.

In this material we will talk about tools for identifying duplicate photos. In particular, today we will review six programs for finding duplicate photos on a Windows computer. We will compare and choose the best and fastest among them.

Finding identical photos: programs and their comparison

There may be several reasons for the demand for programs for searching identical photos on a computer, for example:

• Your collection may have grown so large that duplicates are already taking up a lot of space;
• You need a tool that will find the same or similar photos without having to go through those images yourself.

In our selection there was room for six interesting programs, four of which are distributed free of charge. Below we are:

1. We’ll tell you about each of these search programs and help you quickly navigate their interface;
2. Let's compare all the programs, in which we'll see how they cope with searching for identical images when they are slightly modified;
3. Let's check how well the programs can cope with a large set of photos weighing several gigabytes.

Find duplicate photos using Image Comparer

The first program in our review that searches for duplicate photos is called Image Comparer. Its strengths: good functionality and an interface translated into Russian, including detailed help information.

Now about the disadvantages. First, the program is not free. However, the cost of a license is a humane 350 rubles (although for some reason the number on the website is 500). In addition, you can use Image Comparer for free for the first 30 days.

The second negative point is that it is slightly confusing, which can confuse an inexperienced user. For example, in order to search within one folder (which may contain others), you need to click on the “create gallery” button and select the desired directory in which to scan.

Next, you will immediately be prompted to give a name and save the file of the gallery being created to any convenient location (the program itself will need this file). Once this is done, a list of all the images in the specified folder and its subfolders will open in front of you in the form of a list or thumbnails:

Buttons marked with arrows start a search for duplicates. The first button is a search within one gallery (the folder you selected), the second button a little to the right is within several galleries. We went with the first option.

Next, the program suggested creating another service file in which the results will be saved for further convenient access to them. Actually, creating a file for the gallery and this file with search results can be a little confusing for an inexperienced user. However, then everything is already simple. The found duplicates will appear in front of you:

You can view them in the form of thumbnails, or by clicking on the “image pairs” tab, go to the view where the photos will be compared with each other:

The center slider allows you to adjust the threshold of image similarity. Set it to 100% and you will only have a list of identical pictures that are perfectly similar to each other. Lower values ​​will only show similar photos.

In the settings you can see a huge list of formats from basic JPG and PNG to more exotic ones that the program works with. Formats can be added and excluded from the search. You can also configure the accounting of reflected and inverted images.

• Image Comparer program. Official site ;
• Russian language;

Finding identical photos in three clicks with VisiPics

The next program is VisiPics. Unlike Image Comparer discussed above, VisiPics is a free application that also specializes in duplicate photos. Alas, there is no localization into Russian here, but you definitely shouldn’t be upset about this: everything is very simple and extremely clear.

Using the side navigation bar (we've outlined it in a frame), select the desired directory. Next, click the arrow with the “+” sign to add this folder to the list that will be searched. If you wish, you can select several more folders in the same way. Finally, as a third step, click the Play button to start the process of finding duplicates.

To the right of it is a special slider where you can adjust the level of “attention” of the program. With the default baseline, VisiPics found only two groups of duplicates for us, one of which consisted of three images and the other of two:

These are the images that the program considers to be almost identical duplicates. However, if you lower the slider to the Loose level, then there will be images that are simply similar to each other. In our case, when installing Loose instead of Basic, the application found four more (5 in the final test below) groups of duplicates, and added one more picture to one of the two already found:

The program has relatively few additional options. Here you can configure search in subfolders (it is enabled by default), display of hidden folders, and take into account photos rotated by 90 degrees. On the loader tab, you can ask VisiPics to ignore small files or, conversely, pictures with too high a resolution. The latter is important for speed.

• VisiPics program. Official site ;
• English language;
• Distribution: free.

Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder

If you are looking for an extremely simple program for high-quality search of duplicate photos and images, which would be extremely easy to understand, then pay attention to Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder. The interface is in English, but it is so simple that everyone can understand it.

Using the “+” button, specify the directory or several directories you need to search, then click Start Search and the search will begin. The Scan Subdirectories option is enabled by default and is responsible for searching subfolders. The program copes with its tasks, finding both very similar:

And here are pictures that are slightly more different from each other:

In the program settings, you can set the match to 100% if you only need absolutely identical photos.

As you can see, there are few settings. Perhaps the saddest thing is that the program works with only five main formats: BMP, JPG, PNG, GIF and TIFF. Moreover, the latter is not taken into account by default.

There are also options to ensure that duplicates are deleted directly to the Trash and to disable the pop-up confirmation. The program can also update itself automatically.

Official site ;
• English language;
• Distribution: free.

The Similar Images Finder application greets us with an unkind message in English that we need to pay $34 for it. However, the program is ready to work for free for 30 days. Next, a window appears asking you to select directories to search for duplicates:

From it we learn that Similar Images Finder supports 29 image formats, and the user can select specific formats to search or exclude unnecessary ones. In the list, among other things, you can see ico and wbmp.

Clicking Next will start the search for duplicates, and when it's finished, click Next again to see additional settings. By adjusting these, you can more carefully customize what appears in the results list. Finally, by clicking Next a third time, you will see the result itself:

You can move to the next found picture by clicking the miniature arrow in the upper right corner. The entire list of found duplicates opens by clicking on the large button at the top with the addresses of the current files.

In turn, clicking the Next button at the bottom will lead to the final stage of work. There the program will display a list of what, in its opinion, are definitely duplicates and offer to delete them. In the screenshot above, Similar Images Finder coped with an image where a watermark was added and the histogram contrast was changed.

Distinguishing between the pictures, the program calculated at the level of 5.5%. Moreover, in another example, where we added a strong blur effect to the second picture, the differences, according to the application version, for some reason amounted to only 1.2%:

Alas, the program, while finding real duplicates, by default also shows many images that are completely different from each other, as if they have something in common:

• Similar Images Finder. Official site ;
• English language;
• Distribution: paid, 30 days free use.

Universal search for duplicates with Duplicate Remover Free

Duplicate Remover Free is the only program in our review that is not focused specifically on duplicate photos, but on finding duplicates in general.

As practice shows, such universal solutions do not perform very well in problems related to some narrower area.

However, today we are giving one such program a chance. As the word Free suggests, it is distributed free of charge. The second advantage of the application is the Russian language, and the third is its relative modernity compared to other programs in this collection, many of which, unfortunately, have not been updated for many years.

You should click on the “add directory” button and select the desired folders. By default, the program did not find anything for us in the given directory, however, when at the top instead of “exact duplicates” we selected the “similar images” item, four groups of duplicates were immediately found, one of which consisted of three files at once:

The application has very few additional features. In particular, you can exclude files from the search before and after a certain size.

• Duplicate Remover Free. Official site ;
• Russian language;
• Distribution: free.

Search for matching photos using various algorithms with AntiDupl

The final participant in our review, the AntiDupl program, may appeal to you for several reasons. First of all, it's free. Secondly, it has a Russian interface. The latter, however, is not obvious. In order to enable Russian, open the View menu and in the Language section select the appropriate item:

Unlike others, this program is not installed, but is located in a self-extracting archive, which extracts it along with the necessary files into a separate folder.

To prepare the search for duplicates, click on the button labeled Open and add the necessary directories in the window that appears:

Next, you can click OK, and then activate the green “start search” button on the toolbar. Using a basic algorithm, the program found several groups of duplicates for us:

Having switched the algorithm at the top to the more free SSIM, we already received two more groups of duplicates, and after increasing the “freedom” of the search from 20 to 35%, the program gave us an even more detailed list:

Moreover, in all cases, there were indeed images that were at least noticeably similar to each other. So don't hesitate to experiment with the settings.

The program has many additional options:

On the “search” tab you can find out that AntiDupl supports 13 formats, including, in addition to traditional JPG/PNG, ICON, PSD and EXIF. Of course, you can choose formats. The options also include checking for defects, blockiness and blurriness, and in the last two cases you can set a threshold. It is possible to search in hidden and system directories.

• AntiDupl program. ;
• Russian language;
• Distribution: free.

When searching for duplicates, some users are interested in 100% matching in order to get rid of duplicates in their collection. However, the task often arises of finding simply similar pictures.

And here there is a huge space for possible differences. This can be different formats, resolutions, cropped versions of the same image, adding frames and watermarks, changed colors and captions on the pictures.

We tried to take into account most of these factors and, after all the testing, we ended up creating a small set with more than six dozen pictures. In them we created nine groups of duplicates. Let’s be honest, our experience certainly doesn’t claim to be the ultimate truth, but it was interesting to try. The results are as follows:

• Duplicate Remover Free: found only 3 groups of duplicates;
• Similar Images Finder: found 4 groups, but the inconvenient interface, many false results, and the paid nature of the application greatly spoiled the overall impression;
• AntiDupl found 3 types of duplicates by default, installing the SSIM algorithm increased the search result to 5 groups;
• VisiPics found only 2 groups of duplicates at the basic search level, but setting the slider to the Loose level allowed it to find 7 groups;
• Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder found 7 groups of duplicates;
• Image Comparer was also able to detect 7 groups.

At the same time, Image Comparer was able to find images that Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder and VisiPics missed, and they, in turn, filled in the gaps of Image Comparer.

The fastest programs for finding duplicate photos

At the same time, the quality of the program also depends on its speed. 60+ pictures is, of course, not something that users can work with. So we did another test. This time for speed. To do this, we took a selection of 4450 very different images, the total weight of which exceeded 2.1 GB.

Unfortunately, two programs from this review did not take any place in the test. As it turned out, Similar Images Finder, which costs $34, in its free version is ready to process no more than 200 images at a time.

In turn, the universal duplicate search engine Duplicate Remover Free, faced with a catalog of serious size, worked intensively for more than five minutes, and then completely froze. The remaining programs showed the following times:

• AntiDupl: 0:39;
• Image Comparer: 1:02 (35 seconds to create gallery and 27 to search);
• VisiPics: 2:37;
• Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder: 3:17.

As a result, Image Comparer and AntiDupl clearly took the lead in the speed test. It took them about or, in the case of AntiDupl, less than a minute to process our archive.

Conclusion

Let's summarize. If you need to find not identical, but rather similar photographs that differ, for example, in a signature or watermark, then Image Comparer, Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder and VisiPics in Loose operating mode will cope with this task better than others.

In terms of processing speed for a large collection of images, the undisputed leaders are AntiDupl and Image Comparer.

Finally, in terms of interface convenience, we liked Image Comparer and VisiPics, which immediately allow you to visually evaluate all groups of duplicates. In turn, for the clarity of comparing the characteristics of individual duplicates, we will also note AntiDupl.

If you work with large amounts of information in Excel and regularly add it, for example, data about school students or company employees, then duplicate values ​​may appear in such tables, in other words, duplicates.

In this article we will look at how to find, select, delete and count the number of duplicate values ​​in Excel.

How to find and highlight

You can find and highlight duplicates in a document using conditional formatting in Excel. Select the entire range of data in the desired table. On the “Home” tab, click on the button "Conditional Formatting", select from menu “Rules for highlighting cells” – "Duplicate values".

In the next window, select from the drop-down list "repetitive", and the color for the cell and text in which to paint the found duplicates. Then click "OK" and the program will search for duplicates.

In the example, Excel has highlighted all the same information in pink. As you can see, the data is not compared row by row, but identical cells in the columns are selected. Therefore, the cell “Sasha V.” is highlighted. . There may be several such students, but with different last names.

How to count

If you need to find and count the number of repeating values ​​in Excel, we will create an Excel pivot table for this. Add the “Code” column to the original one and fill it with “1”: put 1, 1 in the first two cells, select them and drag them down. When duplicates are found for rows, the value in the Code column will be incremented by one each time.

Select everything together with the headings, go to the “Insert” tab and press the button "Pivot table".

To learn more about how to work with pivot tables in Excel, read the article by following the link.

In the next window, the cells of the range are already indicated; use a marker to mark “To a new sheet” and click “OK”.

On the right side, drag the first three headings into the area "Line titles", and drag the “Code” field to the “Values” area.

As a result, we will get a pivot table without duplicates, and in the “Code” field there will be numbers corresponding to the repeating values ​​in the source table - how many times this row was repeated in it.

For convenience, let's highlight all the values ​​in the column “Amount by field Code”, and sort them in descending order.

I think now you can find, select, delete and even count the number of duplicates in Excel for all rows of the table or only for selected columns.

Hello dear readers. Today we will talk about duplicate files, as well as methods to deal with them.

Based on the name itself, you probably already guessed what these files are. Such duplicate files are very dirty on the hard drive, so you need to get rid of them periodically.

Duplicates appear on the computer arbitrarily and due to user inattention. Although we are all human and we tend to accumulate all sorts of things. No matter how large the amount of memory your hard drive has, after removing duplicates it will become much freer than it was before this process.

Unfortunately, deleting duplicate files cannot be done without third-party programs. For some reason, the Windows developers missed this point, but people found a way out. There are a lot of free programs on the Internet for getting rid of duplicate files. Below I will list three of the best ones and also give you the opportunity to download them.

CloneSpy

Download CloneSpy utility for free

Auslogics Duplicate File Finder

Download Auslogics Duplicate File Finder for free

DupKiller