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.
- 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.