Converting sensitive data into 'demonstration data'

**dogie** · 10-08-2012, 08:24 PM

Hello all.

I currently have sensitive sales data that I feed into a dashboard I've created. For various other projects I need to be able to showcase some of the functionalities of the dashboard, but I absolutely can't use the current sales data.

Does anyone have any experience in converting such data into sample/demonstration data which is isn't quite random, but is far from what the original is? Ie all name based fields changed, numbers changed but still sensible.

Original data is A-AJ columns and between 10 and 50k lines. Could probably get a way with just 2k lines for demonstration.

Thanks

**Norie** · 10-08-2012, 09:05 PM

It really depends on the type(s) of data you have.

I would be tempted to just replace names with something like Name1, Name2...

For the numbers I might adjust them by a percentage or random value.

I'm sure there are better ways but that's the kind of thing I do.

**FDibbins** · 10-08-2012, 11:58 PM

i agree with using random numbers applied to your data to "hide" the actuals. perhaps if this doesnt work for you, you could upload a sample for us to look at?

you could use either rand() or randbetween()

**dogie** · 10-09-2012, 08:06 AM

Thanks for the tips guys. I would upload some altered samples but turns out I have neither my dashboard or data with me at the moment! I will bump when I do.

I think what I'll end up doing is a really thorough find+replace for words, and rand'ing for numbers. If anyone knows of any fun bulk ways to do that that'd be great.