Excel: Randomly Sequence a List

This page is an advertiser-supported excerpt of the book, Power Excel 2010-2013 from MrExcel - 567 Excel Mysteries Solved. If you like this topic, please consider buying the entire e-book.


Problem: The students in my class must present an oral book report. Rather than have them go alphabetically, I want to randomly sequence them. How can Excel help me do that?

Strategy: Put the students in column A. Add a =RAND() formula in column B. Sort by column B. Each time that you sort, the students will be in a different sequence.

  1. Sort by the RAND() column.

    Gotcha: The data is sorted, and then column B is recalculated. It will appear that the new figures in column B are not in any order. This is because the sort was based on the previous values in column B.