Oz’s Excel Tip: Keep a Workbook for Random Data in Excel

Introduction

Welcome back to another episode of Excel.TV where Oz du Soleil shares his Excel tip. Here it is: always have a workbook with random data.  With this workbook, you’ll have a ready made resource to test your dashboards, workbooks, and financial models. 

In this video, Oz goes through his many worksheets showing off fake data. I actually don’t have a workbook like this. (It’s a good idea to create one, I must admit.)  didn’t want to leave you empty handed, since at the end, Oz says to “Go make your own,” random data workbook. And I need to create a workbook like this too! 

Resources you can use to generate fake and random data

So I figured as I went out to make my own random data worksheet, I’d share my resources with you so that you can make your own. Below I’ve collected a list of resources to help you get started.

How do you generate random data? 

Let us know in the comments.

Jordan Goldmeier
Latest posts by Jordan Goldmeier (see all)

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  • Numbers are easy, but names are a bit of a puzzle for me. I’m wondering if they have links to some sort of census site. I’m hoping someone will do the work and share a workbook in the comments.

  • Here is another possible source

    Discovering millions of datasets on the web 2020 01 23
    https://blog.google/products/search/discovering-millions-datasets-web/
    Across the web, there are millions of datasets about nearly any subject that interests you. If you’re looking to buy a puppy, you could find datasets compiling complaints of puppy buyers or studies on puppy cognition. Or if you like skiing, you could find data on revenue of ski resorts or injury rates and participation numbers. Dataset Search has indexed almost 25 million of these datasets, giving you a single place to search for datasets and find links to where the data is. Over the past year, people have tried it out and provided feedback, and now Dataset Search is officially out of beta.

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