I am working on a Free Give Away of some products. Our systems give me a
list of individuals who we have had contact which are then placed in excel.
We would like to pick a weekly winner and would prefer not to throw darts at
my screen. Any Ideas?

Gummi bears?


--
SamuelT
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Insert a column (A) with a sequential number for each individual starting at 1

Then type the follwing formula in a cell :
=VLOOKUP(RAND()*MAX(A:A)+1,A:B,TRUE)
This assumes that you have the names in culumn B

This formula will pick up a random individual, but remember that it changes
everytime you open or recalculate your spreadsheet !!! Winners might quickly
become losers !!!!


Hans


"David M Fritzke" wrote:

I am working on a Free Give Away of some products. Our systems give me a
list of individuals who we have had contact which are then placed in excel.
We would like to pick a weekly winner and would prefer not to throw darts at
my screen. Any Ideas?

Thanks I will give it a try! I guess I can turn off calculation for this
book, just make it manual.

"hans bal(nl)" wrote:

Insert a column (A) with a sequential number for each individual starting at 1

Then type the follwing formula in a cell :
=VLOOKUP(RAND()*MAX(A:A)+1,A:B,TRUE)
This assumes that you have the names in culumn B

This formula will pick up a random individual, but remember that it changes
everytime you open or recalculate your spreadsheet !!! Winners might quickly
become losers !!!!


Hans


"David M Fritzke" wrote:

I am working on a Free Give Away of some products. Our systems give me a
list of individuals who we have had contact which are then placed in excel.
We would like to pick a weekly winner and would prefer not to throw darts at
my screen. Any Ideas?

Of course, but better is to make a note of the winner, just to make sure.

If you want to prevent this, you could write a macro that does the same
calculation when you run it.


Hans

"David M Fritzke" wrote:

Thanks I will give it a try! I guess I can turn off calculation for this
book, just make it manual.

"hans bal(nl)" wrote:

Insert a column (A) with a sequential number for each individual starting at 1

Then type the follwing formula in a cell :
=VLOOKUP(RAND()*MAX(A:A)+1,A:B,TRUE)
This assumes that you have the names in culumn B

This formula will pick up a random individual, but remember that it changes
everytime you open or recalculate your spreadsheet !!! Winners might quickly
become losers !!!!


Hans


"David M Fritzke" wrote:

I am working on a Free Give Away of some products. Our systems give me a
list of individuals who we have had contact which are then placed in excel.
We would like to pick a weekly winner and would prefer not to throw darts at
my screen. Any Ideas?

Did anyone ever tell you how to do this? I just got 2007 and have no idea now.

"David M Fritzke" wrote:

I am working on a Free Give Away of some products. Our systems give me a
list of individuals who we have had contact which are then placed in excel.
We would like to pick a weekly winner and would prefer not to throw darts at
my screen. Any Ideas?

psells wrote on Tue, 30 Sep 2008 07:39:02 -0700:

"David M Fritzke" wrote:

I am working on a Free Give Away of some products. Our
systems give me a list of individuals who we have had contact
which are then placed in excel. We would like to pick a
weekly winner and would prefer not to throw darts at my
screen. Any Ideas?

Unless 2007 is different, have you seen the posts over the years
concerning a helper column of random numbers that gets sorted?
--

James Silverton
Potomac, Maryland

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

Add another column next to the names.

Fill it with this formula:
=rand()

Select both columns and sort by the random number column.

Choose the name that sorts to the top.

Recalculate and sort again if you have to pick another winner.

psells wrote:

Did anyone ever tell you how to do this? I just got 2007 and have no idea now.

"David M Fritzke" wrote:

I am working on a Free Give Away of some products. Our systems give me a
list of individuals who we have had contact which are then placed in excel.
We would like to pick a weekly winner and would prefer not to throw darts at
my screen. Any Ideas?

--

Dave Peterson