Generate Random Numbers in Excel With These 3 Simple Functions

ever wished your Excel spreadsheets could  surprise you with a Twist of Randomness   today I'm about to show you a simple trick  that turns your ordinary Excel sheet into   a powerful random number generator perfect for  simulations games or even spicing up your data analysis hi I'm Jamie and welcome to teachers Tech  all right here's what we're going to do today I'm   going to walk you through three powerful Excel  functions that Generate random numbers Rand Rand   between and Rand Ray I'll show you step by step  how to use each of these functions plus a quick   trick on how to freeze your random numbers so  they don't change with every recalculation let's   get started let's start with Rand so I'm going  to go put my equal sign in for the function and

start typing Rand here it is right here and these  are the three that we're going to be working with   so with Rand if I go ahead and just close the  brackets like this and hit enter I'm going to   get a random decimal so when you're working with  the Rand function you're going to get a decimal   back if I go and copy this down to a cell I'll it  can be easily moved and I'll get another random   decimal number but notice each time I copy like  this all the numbers change so even the ones that   started with and this is the trick I'll show you  later on how you can uh make sure you save those   random numbers that they don't change if you  recalculate uh one thing so now the next thing   what I want to show you is that we can do some  customization to this Rand so if I go back and   let's say I wanted it to be between Z and 100 so  if I use the Rand here again close my bracket I'm   just going to multiply by 100 so if I multiply by  100 you're going to see now that as I go through   all of these ones here will be uh all between Z  and 100 and again notice every time I recalculate   these ones are recalculating up here as well now  the last one that I want to show you can do a   customization with this rant too so let's say if  I wanted it be between the numbers five and 25   so I go back to my got to put my equal sign in go  back to my Rand and same thing close the bracket   I'm going to multiply this time and so I said 5  to 25 so what I'm going to do is go 25 minus 5   like this but I'm not done yet I have to add five  as well so if I add five like this so the numbers   are going to be between 5 and 25 but put plus  five at the end if I had it between 10 and 50   then I would be 50 minus 10 and a 10 would be here  so I'm going to go and hit enter and you'll notice   now each of these when I copy them through will  all be between five and 25 so if you need some uh   decimals some random numbers to fill something out  with decimals that's how you can man manipulate   this function let's move on to Rand between if  you want to randomly generate whole numbers this

is how you do it you're going to be wanting to use  the Rand between function so if I go and type in   my equal sign and I'll start typing Rand the ren  between is right here there's only two different   arguments that I need to pick in here and it's  going to be the bottom and the top number so if I   put four as the bottom number comma and we'll say  45 as the top numbers and then it'll be General R   it from 4 to 45 so if I hit enter I get 36 I can  copy these down just like before so I can just   copy them over row by row but notice they're  changing all the time so I want to give you   that tip that I was talking about how do I stop  them from changing if I have the set of random   numbers that I need and I don't want them to  change anymore so what I can do is if I go ahead   and highlight these I'm going to go and use the  shortcuts contrl C on my keyboard   and I want to show you if I go contrl V and notice  that this is 41 if I just go contrl V it changed   everything change so I'm just going to go uh back  one step here I just went uh control Z so how do   I copy it with keeping the original numbers in  the first place so if I have these numbers here   so these are it's 27 43 if I go contrl C if I  pick a spot now if I go control shift V now I   keep these as 2743 this still Chang es over here  but these were the numbers that were uh randomly   generated the first time and they're not going  to change at all anymore the last random number

generator I want to show you is the Rand array  function and just to let you know this is only   available in Excel 20121 or 365 so if I go ahead  and go to my Rand and this time it's going to be   a Rand array returns an array of random numbers so  as we go through we can let it know how many rows   want columns min max integer so we can pick  decimal whole numbers or decimal in this so if   I go and say I want let's say five rows and I put  my comma in I want to have uh we'll go four or six   columns and they going to be minimum will be five  and the maximum will be 100 and then the integer   do we want it as a decimal or in here you can see  the difference here if we want a decimal so I'm   going to keep it as an integer so it'll be true  I'm going to close this up and hit enter there   we go so this is a great way uh to do this uh very  quickly and choosing between decimal or the whole   numbers there so I hope you like this little trick  about randomly generating numbers in Microsoft   Excel let me know have you used this before uh  you could have use it in a few different fun ways   or I said maybe you can even fill out some data  here some fake numbers if you need some thanks   for watching this week on teachers Tech I'll see  you next time with more Tech tips and tutorials