Randomly Select Cells

[Tyndie]

Hi

I am looking for a formula to select 5 random cell entries from a list in column A in Excel and put them in 5 cells say in column B.

I have a list of resturants in column A, and I want to select a random resturant to go in 5 cells, but a resturant can only appear once in those 5 cells.

Can anyone help?

[daddylonglegs]

You could try one of these ways.

If your restaurants are in A1:A20 then put this formula in B1 and copy down to B20

=rand()

Then sort columns A and B, using column B as the key....and use the top 5 restaurants.

If you don't want to alter the restaurant list then use the rand formula as before then in D1 use this formula copied down to D5 to give your 5 restaurants

=INDEX(A$1:A$20,RANK(B1,B$1:B$20))

Note: you can hide column B if you wish. 5 restaurants will be re-selected if worksheet re-calculates (hit F9 to to this manually)