Help making a pairing system in excel

[chopsofdoom]

Hi all,

I have been tasked with creating a document that will pair off members of staff in my building. So far I have managed to make something barely workable (rand, rank, and vlookup), while this technically works, there is the possibility of being paired with oneself. Additionally, I have been told members of the same project cannot pair with each other for integrity reasons, so my question is this: would it be possible to create something that A: creates pairs without self-pairing, and B: disallows the pairing of people in the same project?

As I say, my current version technically works, but refreshing the number randomiser until an allowed list is made takes longer than working it out manually!

Thanks in advance

[maniacb]

It would help us if you would upload a workbook with representative data to work on, as per the yellow banner above.

[JEC.]

Show us some sample data

[AliGW]

Administrative Note:

Your duplicate thread has been closed. Attach the sample file to this thread, please, in your next post.

There is no 2020 version of Excel - do you have 365, 2021 or 2019?

Members will tailor the solutions they offer to the version of Office (Excel) that you have. Please check that your forum profile is up-to-date in this respect. If you aren't sure, in Excel go to File | Account and report what it says below the MS logo at the top of that page. If your version is for Mac, please also state this. Thanks.

[chopsofdoom]

Hi all, this is what I'm currently working with (crude I know!). I appreciate any help that could be offered

TIA!

[Pete_UK]

I responded to your other thread, but it was closed by the time I sent my reply (and thus lost it).

You have 15 names, so one will not be paired.

Instead of listing the names in column C in the order of Project number, you could put the 6 names from Project 4 at the bottom of the list, occupying places 10 to 15, with the other names moved up.

Then you could just pair the 1st name with the last, then the 2nd name with the second last, and so on working towards the middle. The middle name will thus not be paired, as you have an odd number of names.

Hope this helps.

Pete