Joel,

Ahhh.

Use another column, with a formula like

=LEFT(A2,FIND(" ",A2)-1)

filled down, to find the "first" name of each entry in your column.

HTH,
Bernie
MS Excel MVP


"joel" wrote in message
...
Thanks for the post. In this xls, there are 5000 entries, where as there
might be 3000 unique entries, and 2000 duplicates. I need to be able to sort
and delete based on first name.

"Bernie Deitrick" wrote:

Joel,

AutoFilter using the custom option, and the "Contains" and then make a decision based on what you
get for each filtering - select the visible cells and enter just your preferred version.


HTH,
Bernie
MS Excel MVP


"joel" wrote in message
...
I am trying to filter a list of 5000 names of different items, where there
are "like" names in different rows. I need to be able to show/delete the
like duplicate ones. So in the names below I would like to search on first
name and if same, then delete the dups. i.e.
INGRAM BARGE CO INC
INGRAM BOOK CO
INGRAM BOOK GROUP INC
Ingram Industries
INGRAM INDUSTRIES INC
INGRAM MICRO INC
International Paper
INTERNATIONAL PAPER CO


After this search, I would like to see only 2 entries.
I