I have a complex operation to perform. My spreadsheet has rows that indicate
items (control number in column A) linked to titles (control number in column
B). A title can have multiple items in the spredsheet. I want to number the
titles and assign random numbers to them so that I can get two random
samples.

I also want to have my random numbering retained in the spreadsheet as a
whole, so I can see all the items assigned to my samples.

How can I "dedupe" column B, assign a random number to each title control,
then transfer that data to my "undeduped" spreadsheet (or have it
retained...)?

I found an article describing a way to assign the random numbers
(http://tutorialized.com/tutorial/Sel...-in-Excel/7197);
it's how to apply this only to the title controls, one per title control,
that I don't know. Someone described how to do this in another statistical
package, I just don't know what to do with Excel. Help, please!