Creating a Random Lottery

[Brian Hanlin]

I have been tossing around the idea of how to use Excel to simulate a
lottery drum for picking prizes. I have to pick out random drawings monthy
for prizes and have been placing tickets with names into a fish bowl. I have
to say this is very anoying and time consuming.

The basics would be to have a list of names, and how many tickets or entries
each name has in the draw. Of course a person with one ticket should stillbe
able to win, but those with more tickets just get a better chance. Idealy, a
form where I can enter a name and the number of tickets then a "Draw" button
that would provide the winner's name would be my goal.

Ideas??

 

[Dave Peterson]

One common suggestion is to use one cell per ticket--if a person buys 10
tickets, then they get 10 cells.

Put this info in a column (say column A).

Then put
=rand()
in B2 (headers in row 1)
and drag down as many rows as you have data

Then select columns A:B and sort by column B.

You can choose the winner from the one that sorts to the top.

 

[Brian Hanlin]

OK, so I glanced ay your reply quickly on my way to work... and dang if I
didn't get the idea under my skin and got the project done in half a day.
Thanks very much for the idea. I'm sure that once I look at it later I'll
see ways to improve it, like turning off Auto Calculation while filling in
the names.