You want to have a drawing, or you’ve created a word list for a party and want to mix them up and don’t want to have to go through the process of pulling them out of someone’s greasy fedora. Here’s how to do it in about 15 seconds:
in Column A, list your names.
in Column B, enter the following: =RAND()*300
What that will do is enter a random number between 1-300 into Column B. If you choose 1000, it will enter a number between 1-1000. Go wild.
Drag to copy the formula down the whole column. You’ll see something like this:
See the random number in column B? Now sort by Column B. Be sure to choose “no header.” The results are confusing to look at, because Column B has an imperative to randomize and will do so again immediately, but now look at Column A:
Voila! Random!
You can throw away Column B – you don’t need it anymore.
