{"id":4248,"date":"2019-01-07T10:59:51","date_gmt":"2019-01-07T15:59:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lisa.rushworth.us\/?p=4248"},"modified":"2019-01-10T21:31:30","modified_gmt":"2019-01-11T02:31:30","slug":"did-you-know-microsoft-word-can-generate-random-text-for-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/?p=4248","title":{"rendered":"Did you know \u2026 Microsoft Word can generate random text for you?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>As I\u2019ve been writing these \u201cDid you know\u201d blog posts, I\u2019ve needed\nsample data to demonstrate how a function works. In Excel, that\u2019s easy enough\nas there are <a href=\"https:\/\/support.office.com\/en-us\/article\/rand-function-4cbfa695-8869-4788-8d90-021ea9f5be73\">RAND()<\/a>\nand <a href=\"https:\/\/support.office.com\/en-us\/article\/randbetween-function-4cc7f0d1-87dc-4eb7-987f-a469ab381685\">RANDBETWEEN(iLow,iHigh)<\/a>\nfunctions. But how do you get sample text in Word? I used to just paste in part\nof a public domain work (as a cultural aside \u2013 the twenty years of copyright\nprotection added under the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act are up this\nyear, so the list of public domain works is expanding again). But what if you\ndon\u2019t have the original Anglo-Saxon Beowulf laying around? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Microsoft Word has a rand() function too \u2013 type =rand(#Paragraphs,#Sentences)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The example here generates two paragraphs that are five\nsentences each. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"282\" src=\"http:\/\/lisa.rushworth.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Word-RandomText01-1024x282.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4249\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Word-RandomText01-1024x282.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Word-RandomText01-300x83.png 300w, https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Word-RandomText01-768x211.png 768w, https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Word-RandomText01.png 1366w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Hit enter \u2013 the formula is replaced with random text. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"301\" src=\"http:\/\/lisa.rushworth.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Word-RandomText02-1024x301.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4250\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Word-RandomText02-1024x301.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Word-RandomText02-300x88.png 300w, https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Word-RandomText02-768x226.png 768w, https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Word-RandomText02.png 1363w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>(This works in PowerPoint too). If you want some different text, try the lorem(#) function &#8212; the number in the parenthesis is the number of paragraphs &#8212; that uses the <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"lorem ipsum paragraph (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lorem_ipsum\" target=\"_blank\">lorem ipsum paragraph<\/a> as the content source.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I\u2019ve been writing these \u201cDid you know\u201d blog posts, I\u2019ve needed sample data to demonstrate how a function works. In Excel, that\u2019s easy enough as there are RAND() and RANDBETWEEN(iLow,iHigh) functions. But how do you get sample text in Word? I used to just paste in part of a public domain work (as a &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[677],"tags":[675,691,729,733,740],"class_list":["post-4248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-office-365","tag-did-you-know","tag-microsoft-office","tag-microsoft-office-365","tag-microsoft-word","tag-ms-word"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4248"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4295,"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4248\/revisions\/4295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}