Random sort ?

B

Bill Sanderson

I work with mailing lists, often using Excel to do much of the work.

I am often faced with a situation in which client has list A and list B,
which total 12,000 names, but wishes to mail to only 7000 names.

Can anyone suggest a way I can create a sort key which will allow sorting a
list (which will probably start out with some rational sort--like
zipcode)--randomly enough that I can reasonably delete, say, the first or
last 6000 names and not worry too much about whether I'm biasing the mailing
by either alpha/name or zipcode?

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D

Dave Peterson

Use a helper column of cells.

Put
=rand()
and drag down.
sort your data by that column and take just the top 7000.

(copy the top 7000 and paste to a new workbook and use that for the
mailmerge--just in case???)
 
B

Bill Sanderson

That sounds exactly like what I need--will try it out soon and let you know.

Yes, I'd copy the ranges to new worksheets--I need to track both sets of
names, so that we can later use the names we have not yet mailed to, just in
case....
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B

Bill Sanderson

Well - I didn't get a chance to try it out on this mailing--turns out that
once the lists were deduped against each other, and internally (both by
address and by name) they came to just under the desired count for the
mailing.

However, I've now read about the function and will remember it for the next
time I need it--thanks again.

--
 
D

Dave Peterson

The best laid plans o' mice and men gang aft aglay.

Bill said:
Well - I didn't get a chance to try it out on this mailing--turns out that
once the lists were deduped against each other, and internally (both by
address and by name) they came to just under the desired count for the
mailing.

However, I've now read about the function and will remember it for the next
time I need it--thanks again.

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