Why does Google Sheets say it removed duplicates but I still see similar company names?

Remove Duplicates only catches rows where selected fields are character-for-character identical. "Acme Corp" and "Acme Corporation" are different strings — Sheets has no way of knowing they refer to the same company without fuzzy matching logic.

Can I use a formula to find fuzzy duplicates in Google Sheets?

Not directly. Google Sheets has no built-in similarity scoring function. You can normalize data with LOWER(), TRIM(), and SUBSTITUTE() to remove some variation before deduplicating, but this misses abbreviations, suffix variants, and spelling differences. For genuine fuzzy matching you need an add-on or an external tool.

What's the best way to deduplicate company names in Google Sheets?

For small files with simple variations, Flookup is the most capable add-on option. For larger files, or when you need to clean data before a CRM import, exporting to a dedicated tool like Clean by Similarity API and reimporting the clean file is faster and catches more duplicates.

Does Google Sheets Remove Duplicates ignore capitalization?

There's a checkbox — "Data has header row" — but case sensitivity depends on the version and context. Even with case-insensitive matching enabled, all other differences (punctuation, abbreviations, suffixes) still cause records to be treated as unique.

What if I need to match on both company name and contact name together?

Sheets add-ons match on one column at a time. To combine signals from multiple columns — so "Jen Walsh at Acme Corp" and "Jennifer Walsh at Acme Corporation" are caught as one record — you need a tool that supports multi-column matching natively, like Clean by Similarity API.

How to Remove Duplicate Company Names in Google Sheets (And Why It Misses Most of Them)

If you've ever run Data → Data cleanup → Remove duplicates in Google Sheets and still found "Acme Corp" sitting next to "Acme Corporation" in your sheet, you've hit the core limitation: Google Sheets only removes exact duplicates.

It's not a bug. It's just what the feature does. The problem is that most real-world duplicate company names and contacts aren't exact matches — they're near-matches created by inconsistent data entry, different source systems, or abbreviation habits. And those, Google Sheets can't help you with.

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What Google Sheets Actually Does

Google Sheets' Remove Duplicates compares the raw text in selected columns. Two cells must be completely identical (or identical when ignoring case, if you check that option) for a row to be flagged as a duplicate.

This means the following all survive as "unique" records:

Record A	Record B	Removed?
Acme Corp	Acme Corporation	❌ No
Microsoft	Microsoft Inc.	❌ No
apple inc	Apple Inc.	❌ No (with case sensitivity on)
Global Partners LLC	Global Partners	❌ No
Jennifer Walsh	Jen Walsh	❌ No

The only pairs it catches are ones like "Acme Corp" and "Acme Corp" — identical strings. In a list built from multiple sources, trade show exports, or manual entry, those are rarely your actual problem.

The Formula Workaround (And Why It's Limited)

A common approach is to normalize the data first using formulas — LOWER(), TRIM(), SUBSTITUTE() — to remove obvious differences before deduplicating. For example:

=LOWER(TRIM(A2))

This helps with casing and whitespace. But it still won't catch:

"Corp" vs "Corporation" vs "Company"
"Inc." vs "Incorporated" vs "Inc"
"Jen" vs "Jennifer"
Word order differences: "Walsh Jennifer" vs "Jennifer Walsh"

You'd need an increasingly complex chain of SUBSTITUTE() formulas to strip every suffix variant — and even then, names entered with different spellings or abbreviations won't match.

Google Sheets Add-Ons for Fuzzy Matching

Two add-ons extend Sheets with fuzzy matching:

Flookup — the most capable option. Supports similarity-based deduplication inside Sheets, with a configurable threshold. Works well for smaller datasets but runs inside Apps Script, which has a 6-minute execution timeout. Files above ~30,000 rows often need to be split and processed in batches. Paid plans from $15/month.

Find Fuzzy Matches — simpler interface, good for spotting typos and near-duplicates in a single column. Less configurable than Flookup, and similarly constrained by Apps Script timeouts on larger files.

Both require installing from the Google Workspace Marketplace, granting permissions to your Google account, and staying within Sheets. If your list needs to go into HubSpot, Salesforce, or any other system after cleaning, you're still exporting a CSV at the end.

The Faster Alternative: Export, Clean, Reimport

For most people trying to clean a contact or company list before a CRM import, the most practical approach is:

Export your sheet as a CSV
Run it through a dedicated deduplication tool
Download the clean file and import it where it needs to go

Clean by Similarity API is built for exactly this. Upload a CSV or Excel file, pick which columns to match on — company name, contact name, or both together — and it finds near-duplicates even when names are spelled differently. Business suffix stripping (Inc., LLC, Corp.), casing normalization, and word order handling are simple toggles. No install, no Google account permissions required. Download a clean merged file, a flagged original, or a review sheet with similarity scores.

For files you'd otherwise process in Sheets, this approach is faster and catches significantly more duplicates than any add-on.

Key Takeaways

Google Sheets' Remove Duplicates catches exact matches only — name variants survive regardless of how similar they look
LOWER() and TRIM() formulas help with casing and whitespace but don't catch abbreviations, suffix variants, or different spellings
Sheets add-ons (Flookup, Find Fuzzy Matches) add fuzzy matching but are constrained by Apps Script timeouts on files above ~30,000 rows and require account permissions
For most CRM import prep, exporting to a dedicated deduplication tool is faster and more reliable than working within Sheets