How do I refresh a random number formula to give a new result?

You need to add an IF statement to your RAND() cells.

I've been trying to do the same for a while and I finally figured it out.

as you can see, I added the IF in the begining to reference the check box in A3

every time I check the box all the cells refresh, because they all have the IF reference.

I've tried it on my Mac and on my iPad and it works great.

HAPPY DAY FOR ME 🙂

Hope that helps.

I don't see a function called RANDRANGE. I do see RANDBETWEEN and RAND. On the iPad, I am not sure this is the only thing that will trigger the functions to refresh, but I do see that if I update a single formula that contains RAND, then all the other formulas that have RAND also refresh. Also, it is not enough to open the formula and close it. It appears that the formula actually needs to changed.

"Does it not work with RANDRANGE?"

A quick look in the iWork Formulas and Functions User Guide, or in the Function Browser, would reveal that RANDRANGE is not a supported function in Numbers.

The guide may be downloaded via the Help menu in Numbers. The Function Browser is available from the Toolbar in any Numbers document. Both are searchable.

Regards,

Barry\

PS: This community area deals with issues and techniques affecting Numbers for Max OS. If you're asking about Numbers for the iPad, you'll find more experts in the iWork For iOS community.

B

I think the problem is that, for performance purposes, in most scenarios we don't want the random numbers refreshing each time we make any change to a document, even if that change is not related to the random numbers. That would make documents sluggish. Hence the checkbox as "button" approach.

SG

Hmm. What could that problem be though? Could I be doing something wrong? I admit I'm new to using Numbers. Does it not work with RANDRANGE? This is the current version of Numbers I'm using on iPad2, version 1.5, updated October 12.

Your solution is correct for Numbers for iOS, where toggling a checkbox only causes an update of cells that refer to that checkbox.

On the full version of Numbers, though, toggling a checkbox causes an update of every cell so the use of the IF statement is unnecessary if the document is only used on a Mac.

Now that this thread is updated its all good.

IMO having to do this procedure is terribly frustrating and not intuitive at all. But I get it. Microsoft is also trying to bridge the gap in code for tablet versions and PC versions of software. I would rather them fix the tablet's need to have the button than incorporate it into the MAC version.

Been trying to solve this issue in moving a spreadsheet from Excel to Numbers for over a year. This finally does the trick; although, it does take two clicks in Numbers rather than one click in Excel. However, that's much better than what I was doing which took four different keystrokes—about eight times slower. Thanis

I'm having this same problem, and it looks like the checkbox trick is *not* working. Checking and unchecking a checkbox isn't affecting random number cells on the sheet.

JW,

Any change to the content of your sheet will cause a recalculation, including checking or unchecking a checkbox. If it isn't working for you, there's some other problem.

Jerry

I said RANDRANGE here because of confusion with the similar Python function, but I did in fact put RANDBETWEEN in Numbers.

Noted about iWork for iOS, thanks.

Not true, I am working this very problem on numbers on mac and just the check box alone does not refresh RAND function.

Yes, but you are working in Numbers 5, which adopted the iOS behavior. Numbers 5 didn't exist when the rest of this was posted.

The easiest thing to do is to add a small table and format one cell as a checkbox. Clicking the check box will instigate the auto recalc and the random numbers will update: