I may have been dreaming, but for some reason I remember someone telling me that you can have Excel choose a sample for you from a list in a spreadsheet.

For example, I have a list of 400 loans (in an Excel Spreadsheet) and would like to review about 5% of them.

Does anyone know how to do this?

i remember when you heard that, but i dont remember how. sorry. im just not any help to you. haha

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OK mister smarty pants, if you remember who told us? I could ask them!

This might not be the easiest/correct way, but it works for me. Use the formula to generate random numbers: @RAND()*400. (If you have 400 to choose from.) Then drag the formula down into 20 cells (5% of 400). That should give you 20 random numbers between 1 and 400.

Try Tools, Data Analysis, Sampling. If you don't have the Data Analysis option, go to Tools, Add Ins, and then choose Data Analysis.

Highlight the cells you want to include in the sample-this is what goes in "Input Range". Sampling Method-I used Random and input the number of cells I wanted it to choose.

Not sure if this is what you're looking for but it worked when I tested it.

1.In Excel, make sure that you have the Analysis Tool Pak Add-In (This is provided with all later versions of Excel, you just have to click to add it).
a). From the Tools menu, click Add-Ins.
b). Select Analysis ToolPak and click OK.
2. Open your data set in Excel.
3. From the Tools menu, click Data Analysis.
4. Select Sampling.
5. Highlight your data set for the Input Range.
6. Select Random Sample with Number of Samples equal to 30, for example.
7. Select a Cell to be your output range.
8. Repeat steps 3-7 for the rest of the 30 samples, for example.

This is the way I have used it in the past, but I have found that in picking the random sample, sometimes it will pick the same record twice or more depending on the sample size you want.

Yea! It worked. Thank you all!

Another way to select a random sample is as follows:
Insert a column in Excel. Go to Tools - Data Analysis and select random number generation. Set the distribution to uniform and the number range 0 to 1. Set the output range to be the same as the column you inserted previously. This function will product a random number for each record. You then sort your data by the random number field, which, in effect, puts your entire population in random order. If your sample size is 25, just take the first 25 on the list. If you decide to expand your sample from 25 to 35, just take the next 10 on the list (again, the records are in random order) rather than so through another sample selection process. Need to expand the sample again due to errors found, just keep going down the list in order.

I'll try that, thanks!