Joe wrote on Sun, 25 Apr 2010 14:46:04 -0700:

"James Silverton" wrote:
have a helper column, put randbetween(1, #values) in it

Using RANDBETWEEN incurs a lot of unnecessary overhead and the
risk of a #NAME error and confusion if the user is not
familiar with the ATP (before Excel 2007).

It is sufficient to fill the column with =RAND().

(I am also bothered by the likelihood of duplicate results
from RANDBETWEEN due to quantization. But I can say with
impunity that is a real problem.)

After I posted, I did realize that RAND would be sufficient but surely
anyone who wants to do random selection will have installed the ATP.
Duplicate values (and these can occur even with RAND) do not cause a
problem since all rows will be represented and Sort does not care about
it.


Email, with obvious alterations: not.jim.silverton.at.verizon.not