Excel Highlighting duplicates with exact matches

Question

1

I've got two columns of data, and I would like to use conditional highlighting to find the EXACT matches in both columns. However, using a formula like this one turns up a lot of incorrect matches:

=MATCH(A1,B:B,0)>0

There are a lot of partial matches, so cells are highlighted that I don't want. What I want is the equivalent of the "Match Entire Cell Contents" checkbox in the Find & Replace dialog.

To make this clear, it seems Excel will do partial matches - here is the Find & Replace dialog without "Match Entire Cell Contents" checked, with a sample search for all matches:

Answer 1

1. Select the data you want to check for duplicates. This can be a column, a row, or a range of cells.
2. On the Home tab, in the Styles group, click Conditional Formatting > Highlight Cells Rules > Duplicate Values
3. The Duplicate Values dialog window will open with the Light Red Fill and Dark Red Text format selected by default. To apply the default format, simply click OK.

NOTE: When applying the built-in duplicate rule to two or more columns, Excel does not compare the values in those columns, it simply highlights all duplicate instances.