Creating a simple lucky draw random pick on Excel

[scrummy]

Hi,

I want to create a lucky draw function on Excel for an internal employee campaign. Every month, we will receive forms from colleagues and the draw is conducted bi-monthly. I need to draw 5 unique winners from each month. How do I do it? Trust that the easier way is to split the different months onto separate worksheets I believe.

If I have 10 submissions for the month of Januay and entered as followed:

Name Department
Joanne Accounts
Kelvin HR
Joanne Accounts
Susan Travel

I found this formula in another forum, is the below formula correct?
INDIRECT("a"&(INT(RAND()*10)+1))

It works but it also tends to draw repeats. Also, can you explain the formula to me as I assumed that a random pick should just use "RAND ()".
But, it churns out numbers instead.

 

[Derek Brown]

Hello and welcome to The Board.
If a VBA function is OK for you, have a look at:
http://www.ozgrid.com/VBA/RandomNumbers.htm
For more detailed examples:
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/RandomNumbers.aspx

 

[scrummy]

Thanks Derek.
I'm not very familiar with VBA. : (

I'm better with using formula for my current expertise.
: )

Thanks for providing the VBA functions.
Do you know if the formula I used is correct?

 

[Derek Brown]

It does seem to work but you may get duplicate numbers (names) - but you could ignore the duplicates of course. F9 will update the cell.
You could use RANDBETWEEN (I think it is Excel 2007 onwards but not sure):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBXgcfcitBk