Random selections in Excell worksheet

[peternorman]

Our society has Excel (Office 95 version) worksheet containing just over 3000 names and addresses in alpha order
We need to extract approx 400 of these from the list that are are in random order and then copy these to a new worksheet.
We have tried selecting individual lines using shift/control/alt/spacebar in any variation of these keys without success.
Is there a way we can exytact these names.??
many thanks

peter

 

[eliW]

On 2002-08-25 23:56, peternorman wrote:
Our society has Excel (Office 95 version) worksheet containing just over 3000 names and addresses in alpha order
We need to extract approx 400 of these from the list that are are in random order and then copy these to a new worksheet.
We have tried selecting individual lines using shift/control/alt/spacebar in any variation of these keys without success.
Is there a way we can exytact these names.??
many thanks

peter

Hi Peter and welcome to the board.

I am not sure that I understand your problem,
but if you want to choose 400 records randomally out of exsisting 3000 - then I am sure that it can be done in many different ways.

For example:


(1) Add another column lets say G
(2) Enter in G2 =randbetween(1,10000) and copy down to the last record
(3) Sort records on column G
(4) Choose and copy to another location the first 400 record

Regards,

Eli
This message was edited by eliW on 2002-08-26 01:14

 

[peternorman]

The problem is there are 3000 names and we have approx 300 names we have to extract. These are on handwritten cards.
The idea is to go down the list and highlight the selected names and copy them to another worksheet. TRying to highlight and select individual records is the problem we can't find a way of doing this.
peter

 

[DBA]

Peter,

Eli's solution will work for you. Do you need more detailed instructions on how to follow it?

Regards,

DBA

 

[voodoo]

This seems a bit confusing. I think the first post showed you how you can isolate 300 or 400 items randomly.

Now you need to capture the data (e.g. names and address details) and copy and paste to a new worksheet or workbook. Is That right?

If that is the case then you can just highlight the items after randomly sorting them and copy and paste them.

Other than this I cant see exactly what else you are looking for. Can you try to explain in more detail.

 

[voodoo]

Ahh I think I see the problem. You are trying to highlight rows individually. In that case just follow the instructions in the first post and sort by the random number, then just copy the first block of 300 rows (they are already randomly sorted).

 

[eliW]

On 2002-08-26 23:45, peternorman wrote:
The problem is there are 3000 names and we have approx 300 names we have to extract. These are on handwritten cards.
The idea is to go down the list and highlight the selected names and copy them to another worksheet. TRying to highlight and select individual records is the problem we can't find a way of doing this.
peter

Hello again.
Now I understand that your problem is not choosing names randomally, but marking 300-400 names of 4000 name list. That also can be done in different ways.

(1) add an extra column before names
(2) put an * in that column for every row you choose
(3) filter the entire range on the *
(4) you'll have only the records that you selected
(5) copy to another location

Eli
chnged "maeking" to "marking"
This message was edited by eliW on 2002-08-27 00:12

 

[peternorman]

I have the answer!! I visted our society sec.last night. She was highlighting all the required names and copying data. However the problem was when she clicked on copy she got an error message saying you cannot use this feature for multiple selections.
She pressed the CTRL key on the first selection and then continued to select.
This does not work. I discovered you must select your first name without use of CTRL key and then all following selections using the CTRL key. This worked and all the selected namers were copied to another worksheet for printing.
Thanks for the replies to my original message

peter