Excel Assign Thanksgiving Dinner Sides Using Excel - Episode 2662

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This video has been published on Nov 26, 2024.
Microsoft Excel Tutorial: Randomly Assign Sides for Thanksgiving Dinner

In today’s tutorial, we’re tackling a fun holiday challenge: assigning dinner sides for Thanksgiving using Excel! Whether you’re hosting a big feast or coordinating a potluck, Excel makes it easy to assign dishes randomly and fairly. In this video, I’ll walk you through the process step by step, using Excel’s powerful SORTBY and RANDARRAY functions.

Have you ever used a spreadsheet to manage your holiday meals? Let me know in the comments! My friend Katie from my morning workout group inspired this video—she needed a way to assign sides for her large Thanksgiving dinner. Together, we built a system in Excel to ensure everyone gets a dish to bring.

You’ll learn how to create a randomized assignment of guests to side dishes (or desserts!) using just one formula. We’ll also discuss how to lock down the results so they don’t change every time the spreadsheet recalculates. With a simple Copy, Paste Values step, you’ll have a finalized list ready to share. And if you want to get extra fancy, I’ll show you how to create a PDF of your list to send out to your guests.

Whether you’re bringing cranberry jalapeño relish (like me!) or coordinating the whole menu, this tutorial will save you time and stress. This technique works with Microsoft Excel 365, Excel 2021, and Excel 2024—perfect for those using the latest features.

Thanks for watching! If you’re in the U.S., I hope you have an amazing Thanksgiving this week. Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more Excel tips and tricks. See you next time for another episode of MrExcel! 🍂🦃

To download the workbook from today: Excel Assign Thanksgiving Dinner Sides Using Excel - Episode 2662 Sample Files - MrExcel Publishing

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Table of Contents
(0:00) Who uses a spreadsheet to track holiday parties?
(0:15) Can you randomly assign sides in Excel?
(0:28) Start with two lists and COUNTA
(0:41) Using SORTBY in Excel with RANDARRAY
(1:18) Pressing F9 until Bill gets Relish
(1:30) Changing to Manual Calculation Mode
(1:44) Copy and Paste Values
(1:58) Set Print Range and Export to PDF
(2:15) Happy Thanksgiving
(2:16) Thanksgiving Spreadsheet Blues (Bluegrass)

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Transcript of the video:
Today's question how to assign dinner sides for Thanksgiving using Excel.
Down in the YouTube comments let me know do you have a spreadsheet tomanage your holiday meals? Tell me about it.
I'll tell you who does have a Thanksgiving spreadsheet.
My friends in the morning workout group, Katie was saying how she has this big group coming over and she has to assign sides and wouldn't it be great if Excel could assign the sides. I'm like absolutely we can do that. So here's what we have. We have a list of all the people attending the sides that we want including some desserts.
Down here, let's just do a count a to figure out how many people. We have the number of sides and number of people should be equal, right. And then over here for the to assign them we say equal SortBy this function introduced in 2019 should be in Microsoft 365 Excel 2021 or Excel 2024. Choose the list of people here so that's B6 to B25. A comma and then this is where we specify what order those people should be in. Well, we're going to ask for random array. So RandArray, how many rows we want. We can just type a 20 in there or click on that cell, either way. Close parens for the RandArray and then close parens for the SortBy. One single formula will give the whole list.
All right, now look, since this is my spreadsheet I want to bring the jalapeno cranberry relish. So I'm going to keep my eye on that cell. I'm going to press the F9 key until I see Bill show up there.
There! Now once we get Bill in the right spot, we want to lock this down. We don't want these to be reassigned. One thing you do is come out here to the formulas tab, go to calculation options and change the manual. That'll prevent a recalc but it'll still get recalc at the Save. The safe way is to select this data on the Home tab, go to copy and then not a regular paste but a paste special.
And we're going to choose paste values from this paste drop down here. And that will lock those in.
From here you're home free. Maybe do a page layout print area set print area and then file export create a PDF and click publish. There you are home free. What could go wrong? Hey, I want to thank Katie for asking that question. I want to thank you for stopping by. If you're in the United States, have a great Thanksgiving this week. We'll see you next time for another netcast from Mr Excel.
 

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