Random Name Generator

[Dirk McCord]

Good afternoon,

I work in a shop enviroment. I'm looking to create an Excel Spreadsheet to help schedule my employees. I have around 30 assembly jobs with the same amount of employees. I want to be able to list all the jobs I have and then randomly pick employees to run whatever job they get assigned to. I'm running MS Office 2013.

A couple of issues that I will have is that not all jobs with run everyday. If there is a way to check a box so that job doesn't get pick would be nice and I have certain jobs that require 2 or more people to run.

If anyone can give me a clue as to how this is done that would be great.

Thank you

[#2]

Without more info - one way of doing this is to number the Activities 1-30 in the column next to the name. Assuming Employees are listed in A2:A31, in B2 add =RAND() and fill that formula down to B31. In column C add =RANK(B2,$B$2:$B$31,1) and fill that down to C31. You can then use VLOOKUP to match the number in the Activity Column with the Rank of the random number generator... or even better use INDEX and MATCH. One thing to bare in mind is that every time you open or re-calculate the sheet it will give a different rank so you may need to copy and paste the values to have a static copy, print out the list, or look at a Macro to automatically refresh, copy and paste into a history tracker. Hope that is helpful/ makes sense.

[#3]

Hey, @Dirk McCord 

use the Excel VLOOKUP function to match the number in the Activity Column with the Rank of the random number generator or even better use INDEX and MATCH. VLOOKUP that works in any direction and returns exact matches by default, making it easier and more convenient to use than its predecessor.

The range where the lookup value is located. Remember that the lookup value should always be in the first column in the range for VLOOKUP to work correctly. For example, if your lookup value is in cell C2 then your range should start with C.

The column number in the range that contains the return value. For example, if you specify B2:D11 as the range, you should count B as the first column, C as the second, and so on.

Optionally, you can specify TRUE if you want an approximate match or FALSE if you want an exact match of the return value. If you don't specify anything, the default value will always be TRUE or approximate match.

Now put all of the above together as follows:

=VLOOKUP(lookup value, range containing the lookup value, the column number in the range containing the return value, Approximate match (TRUE) or Exact match (FALSE)).