Real random list

Hello,

I am trying to show random articles but the random sorting always shows me the same thing. I tried to do it by keywords but still showing me the same articles for those keywords. Looking for idea of how to show a REAL random list of anything, so that every time there’s a fresh list of random items.

@ThinhDinh @Robert_Petitto would love your help.

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How are you setting the random thing up?

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I choose "sort -> randomlyScreen Shot 2020-09-27 at 12.27.06 PM "

So you just want the order of articles to be random and still showing them all? I displayed random rows in one of my apps but it was a case where I displayed just 1-3 rows of my data.

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It’s choosing the random articles and shows the same ones every time. So it’s only random the first time, then it’s just the same ones as before. So I think I need to be creative here somehow, maybe generate random numbers or something every few min. Not sure.

Are the informations displayed different in the whole list?

Not sure what you mean @Lucas_Pires, please clarify

Yes, they are different, let’s assume that.

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I think an alternative way is to have a numerical order column.

=ARRAYFORMULA(IF(A2:A<>””,ROW(A2:A)-1,””))

Then in the editor, make a single value column, take a random value from that numerical order column. Then set the sort to the single value, would it work?

Not sure if we have to make a relation to get different numbers for each row.

I’ll give this a try! Thank @ThinhDinh :pray::pray::pray:

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It’s not a bug, it’s a feature but just not a very well thought of feature :joy:

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I have an in-line list of users in cards layout in one of my apps…it is set to display the users randomly and it works well. It shows them in a different random order every time the app is launched, not if you visit a different tab and then return to the tab in the same session. Perhaps this is what makes it seem that it’s not working?

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@Deena that won’t be enough for my needs. I want it to show them random items every time they read an article. Thank you :heart_eyes:

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Hi guys and anyone who is reading it. This is how I did it. I added a new column to my articles tab and added =RANDBETWEEN(1,1000) formula. This created a random number between 1 and 1000 for each article.

In file->spreadsheet settings->calculation I set it to re-calculate every minute.

On inline sort settings I set it to sort by order of the random number descending or ascending isn’t important in this case. And vualá! I have an actual random list of articles each time I load an article. Thank you for all your help!!

More info:

Screen Shot 2020-09-28 at 12.31.09 PM|411x500

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In my experience when I used the single value random for my Chadwick app, it updates whenever the user makes an action while using the app. Pretty much instant. If you want to try it you can copy this back.

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Wouldn’t this cause the entire sheet to reload every minute?

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The sheet doesn’t reload, the random numbers just change…

Thank you @ThinhDinh, not sure why in my case it kept showing the same articles. I’ll check out your Chadwick app!

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Let me know if I can help more :smile:

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how about new record coming? should it be automatic created or need to do manual?