I’m working on a Zapier workflow and need to clean up my Google Sheets data by getting rid of duplicate entries. The duplicates should be identified by looking at just one specific column. I know Google Sheets has this feature built in when you use it manually, but I can’t figure out how to make this happen automatically through a Zap. Has anyone managed to set up duplicate removal in their Zapier automation? I’ve been looking through the available actions but nothing seems to handle this specific task. Any suggestions on which Zapier actions or workarounds might help me achieve this goal?
zapier has lookup tables that might help. just set one up with unique values from your column, then validate new data against it before it gets to your sheet. not perfect, but it catches most dupes without using scripts or complex filters.
I’ve had good luck using Zapier’s Filter action with Google Sheets lookups. Set your Zap to check if the data already exists before adding new rows - use ‘Find Row’ to search for matches, then add a Filter that only continues when there’s no match found. Way better than trying to clean up duplicates after the fact. You’ll need to tweak your workflow a bit, but it beats deleting duplicates later. Performance is solid for moderate data and stays within Zapier’s built-in actions.
Had this exact problem last year. Zapier doesn’t have a direct duplicate removal action for Google Sheets, which is annoying. I ended up using Google Apps Script instead - way more reliable. Created a simple script with a timer trigger that checks my target column for dupes and removes the extra rows. You can set it to run every few minutes or hours depending on how often new data comes in. The removeDuplicates method works great and beats trying to hack around Zapier’s limitations. If you’re not into Apps Script, try a helper column with a formula to flag duplicates, then have Zapier filter on that column before processing downstream.