I just got it to work - Just what I was looking for. THANKS!!!

"Conrad Carlberg" wrote:

Hi Maureen,

I've always found that the simplest way is to select as many adjacent cells
in column B as you have numbers in column A. With those column B cells
selected, enter this formula:

=RAND()

and hold down CTRL as you press Enter. This will enter pseudo-random numbers
in column B, one for each value in column A. At this point, it usually makes
sense to convert your =RAND() formulas to values. Select them, choose Edit |
Copy,. then choose Edit | Paste Special, click the Values option, and click
OK. (There's also a keyboard shortcut to do this, but it's not a big
timesaver.)

Now, suppose that your existing numbers are in cells A1:A495. If you've put
random values in B1:B495, select A1:B495 and sort (either ascending or
descending) on column B. This will give you a random ordering of the numbers
in column A. If you want a randomly selected set of column A values, just
select A1:A5.

--
C^2
Conrad Carlberg

Excel Sales Forecasting for Dummies, Wiley, 2005


"mnpremo" wrote in message
...
I'm creating an Excel spreadsheet that has several hundred numbers listed
(in
no particular order) in the first column. The numbers are all in this
format: 000.00.00.00

I was wondering if Excel has the ability to go through and select several
of
these numbers randomly from the column so that I can then have a random
sample from my list of hundreds of numbers.

Thank you-
Maureen