Why matching order IDs are not always duplicate CSV records

Two CSV records can share an order ID and still contain different information. For example, these fictional records should both be kept:

order_id,sku,status

00101,SKU-009,paid

00101,SKU-009,pending

CSV Cleanup Kit compares every column after the cleanup rules you choose. It does not merge records by order ID or decide which status is correct. If the entire cleaned record matches an earlier one, Remove exact duplicates keeps the first occurrence. Turn that rule off when repeated identical rows are meaningful in your workflow.

Trimming can change the comparison: a cell containing " paid " becomes "paid" when Trim outer whitespace is on. Review the before-and-after preview and the JSON change report before importing the export into another system.

That is a deliberate limit of this small local tool. It handles UTF-8 CSV/TSV, not XLSX workbooks, and does not infer dates or fill missing values. What would you need to compare before treating two rows as duplicates? Fictional examples are welcome.

Posted by the product maker. Product development and this explanation were assisted by Codex.