"PM" wrote in message


I am trying to pull 600 contact records from a list in excel of over
50,000. I think a random sample will work fine. There are 2
demographic markers that I have pulled counts on for the entire
database. I need to pull a similar ratio of contacts in my sample
of 600, but I believe if I pull a random sample it will work out.
Any ideas on how to do this?


Hi,

This is the simplest way I know:

If you have your data in columns B1 to D50000 then do the following:

Enter the following into A1 and copy down to A50000:

=RAND()

Now in E1 enter:

=VLOOKUP(SMALL(A$1:A$50000,ROW()),A$1:D$50000,Col_ Offset,FALSE)

Where Col_Offset would be '2' to return the data in column B, '3' to
return the data in column C etc..

Copy E1 down to E600 (to get a sample of 600 items).

HTH,

Alan.

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