No matter whether you are testing a new marketing campaign or evaluating your current level of customer service, you want to be sure that you base your analysis on a reliable sample of your customers.

For example, you would like to use a random sample of 200 of your 1,000 customers in your analysis. You have an alphanumeric list of those customers in Column B of your Excel Customer Data worksheet, so to obtain a random list, follow these steps:

  1. Insert a new column to the right of Column B.
  2. Enter Customer No. in C1.
  3. Click in C2 and press [Ctrl][Shift][End].
  4. Type =RAND() and then press [Ctrl][Enter].
  5. Select C1.
  6. Click the AZ (sort) button in the Standard toolbar.
  7. Delete Column C.

Column C now associates a random Customer No. between 0 and 1 for each customer in the list. Thus, sorting the worksheet in Column C randomly sorts the customer data in Column B, from which you can choose the first 200 for your sample.

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