 A quick way to make a random sample of a set of records is to use the Excel RAN function. This function generates random values between zero and one with 15 decimal places, which is a lot, well over a billion values and big enough for everything we're going to do. But to keep Excel continually changing the RAN values, let's set the calculation to manual. On the formula tab, find calculation options, click the arrow and then set it to manual. Now remember when you get through to reset this to automatic if you wanted to automatically calculate. Let's start by inserting a column to the left of the records that we want to sample. I'm going to select the column, click insert. If I have a lot of data, which I do here, I like to use shortcut keys to help me move around a lot faster. I'm going to click in this cell there and then use the control shift down era to drop down and find my last record, which is row 1729. I'm going to enter something in that cell because the rest of the cell is empty. I'm just going to enter stop. I can go back up to the top by using control shift up arrow and that takes me back to where it began. I'm going to click in that first cell adjacent to my first record and I'm going to enter the RAN equal. Start typing R-A-N-D. Then select that. If you notice it's an empty function, we just need to have the closing parentheses and click enter and it enters that value. I'm going to expand this. You can see all those decimal places there, 15 of them. Now to copy this down, I'm going to go to the control shift down era again and that selects the whole column. Then I want to use the function to key to go back to that cell where I have my RAN function and then I hit control enter and it copies down that formula all the way to the bottom. So I have my random numbers. To make my selection of the sample size I need, I'm going to select the column that has my random values. Go to the data, A to Z sort. Sort smallest to largest. I'm going to click on that and it will ask you to want to expand the selection which I do so I'm going to click on sort. Now it has sorted all those 1700 records from smallest to largest. Now I want to select my sample. I'm going to start here in row one so I get my titles and go down to row 21. That will give me a sample of 20. Use control C to copy. I'm going to enter a new worksheet, select that first cell, control V to copy that data over. I'm going to get rid of that column containing the random values that just slows things down, delete that column. So there I have a sample of 20 and that should do it.