Microsoft Excel is perhaps the most powerful spreadsheet application you can buy. But it also has some simple functions, like finding duplicates in data.

Located in the Home tab's Format section, the Conditional Formatting drop-down menu includes the Duplicate Values option. Remove subtotals and turn off outlining before you apply Remove Duplicates.

Microsoft Excel can save you time in lots of little ways, like adding a drop-down list to cells so that only pre-written text can be entered.

You can easily create a drop-down list in Excel to limit the values that can be entered in a column. Here's how to set one up.