We all know the old saying: data scientists spend 80% of their time cleaning and manipulating data and only 20% of their time actually analyzing it. In which case we could all use a few tricks to speeding up that process. Here are today’s pointers for cleaning data in Excel: 1.) Clear formatting! In your worksheet select all data, then go to Home –> Clear –> Clear Formats. This will make a world of difference. 2.) Remove all duplicates. You can do this by going to Home –> Conditional formatting –> Highlight cell rules –> Duplicate values. This will now highlight all duplicate values, making it much easier to remove them.