Random draw from an Excel list

Put one entry per row and the column names in row 1. Row 1 is always read as the header and never as an entry, so if your data starts in the first row, insert a row above it and type a name such as Name or Ticket. Keep only the columns you want to see in the winners table. Every column you upload appears there, and in a public draw every column can be downloaded by anyone with the link.

Two Excel habits change what ends up in the file. Numbers with leading zeros, such as ticket 0042, are saved as 42 unless the column is formatted as text before the numbers go in. Long identifiers, such as 16-digit order numbers, can be saved in scientific notation, which turns several different numbers into the same string. Format those columns as text, then check a few values in the CSV before you upload it.

Repeated rows are kept as they are. If someone appears on three rows, they hold three chances. Remove repeats in Excel first if your rules allow one entry per person; the upload step will tell you how many it still finds.

1. 1
   Move the list onto a sheet of its own. A CSV holds one sheet, and Excel saves only the active one.
2. 2
   Choose File, then Save As or Save a Copy, and pick CSV UTF-8 (Comma delimited) as the file type. UTF-8 keeps accented letters and non-Latin names intact. The marker Excel puts at the start of a UTF-8 file is handled, so the first column name is read cleanly.
3. 3
   Open the draw form, go to the entries step and upload the .csv file. The limit is 2,000,000 rows and 50 MB.
4. 4
   Read the confirmation before going on. It shows the number of entries found, the column names, and how many rows repeat another row. Compare the count with the number of rows in your sheet, minus the header.

In some regional settings, Excel separates CSV columns with semicolons instead of commas. The upload reads commas only. You still get one entry per row, but the columns come out wrong, and the confirmation shows it: a single column named “Name;Ticket” means the file used semicolons. Change the list separator in your system's regional settings and save again, or export from Google Sheets or LibreOffice, which let you choose a comma.

Blank lines in the CSV are skipped. A line made only of commas is not blank, though, and counts as an entry with empty values. Excel can write lines like that for rows that look empty but still sit inside the range the sheet considers used. If the entry count is higher than you expect, open the CSV in a text editor and look at the end of the file, or delete the empty rows below your data in Excel and save again.

For up to 10,000 rows you can skip the file. Select the cells in Excel, header row included, copy them, and paste them into the Paste a list tab. Cells arrive separated by tabs. When every line has the same number of columns, they are kept and the first line becomes the header. The pasted list is turned into a CSV and stored and published like an upload.

One catch: each pasted line is trimmed, so an empty cell at the start or the end of a row leaves that row a column short. If any line disagrees with the others, the whole paste is read as one column called Entry, one line per entry, with the header line counted as an entry. Fill the empty cells, or save the sheet as CSV instead.

A test draw goes through every step with your real file, shows the winners, and saves nothing. It is the quickest way to see that Excel wrote the file you meant: the right count, the right columns, the ticket numbers with their zeros. The uploaded file is discarded after a test, so the real draw needs the file again. What a real draw costs depends on the number of rows, and the pricing page works it out for any size.