A friend of mine is familiar with working in Lotus 1-2-3 and has asked me for some assistance in converting to Excel or OpenOffice Calc. Of course I chose to post my Calc solutions here.

The formula for random number generation is quite easy.

=RAND()

This will get you a random number between zero and 1 (2 decimal places is the default format).

To generate a random number between two values, the formula is modified slightly to:

=RAND()*(b-a) + a
Where b is the higher value and a is the lower value.

Update: You can also use RANDBETWEEN (thanks to Jason):

=RANDBETWEEN(a; b)

For example, to generate a random number between 1 and 100, you would use the following formulae:

=RAND()*(100-1)+1    or
=RANDBETWEEN(1;100)

If you wish this to be a whole number (no decimal places), you can do this in one of two ways.

By Formula

You can modify the formula to include the ROUND function:

=ROUND(RAND()*(100-1)+1)

By Format

You can use the Delete Decimal Place icon on the toolbar and reduce the number of decimal places.