Creating Random Data in Excel using RANDBETWEEN and CHOOSE

Many times we are in need of random data. Suppose, if you are doing some tutorial on Excel formulas, then we need to have random data in your Excel sheet. There are many situations in the same way and when we are in need of some random data, we generally use some websites that helps in random data generation.

Steps to generate random data using RANDBETWEEN and CHOOSE

As I told earlier, we can generate random data in Excel without use of any website. Two formulas RANDBETWEEN and CHOOSE helps us for random data generation. We will see how we could do that easily. Combination of RANDBETWEEN and CHOOSE functions in Excel, could generate random data as you want.

 1 – Using RANDBETWEEN (bottom, top)

RANDBETWEEN function helps you to generate random data between the bottom and top arguments. ‘bottom’ parameter specifies the minimum value and ‘top’ parameter specifies the maximum value. For example, if we want to fill the cell with the any value in between ‘1’ and ‘3’, then we need to use RANDBETWEEN (1, 3) in the formula bar and hit enter. This can be used, if you want to generate some long integer values as IDs right in your Excel without the need of any websites. This generates the value between ‘1’ and ‘3’ as shown below,1

2 – Using CHOOSE ()

CHOOSE is really an awesome function and when used with RANDBETWEEN, we could get to know the real use of it. General syntax of CHOOSE is CHOOSE (index_num, value1, [value2], …)

Here,

Index_num is required and specifies which value argument is selected.

Value1, Value 2 , … specifies the values to be returned based on the provided index_num. Suppose, if you give CHOOSE (2,”ONE”,”TWO”,”THREE”), then this returns “TWO”. It is similar to fetching out the value from the array based on the index provided.

See below to understand the use of CHOOSE along with RANDBETWEEN,2

 What’s next?

Isn’t this awesome? This really saves you much time to generate random data and that too in the way you want. This again proves that Excel can be used to do anything we want. If you have anything to add, please do share with us through comments. Start using RANDBETWEEN and CHOOSE in Excel.

Sridhar Belide

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  • As choose and randbetween naturally give a fairly even spread of results, is there any way to control whether one option appears more than others?

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