Creating Random Bingo Cards in Numbers

You can create random bingo cards using two tables in Numbers on your Mac. Each card will be unique and draw from a larger list of words, numbers or phrases. You can print each card or save them individually to a Pages document for later use.
You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).
Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to create random bingo cards in Numbers. 
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Now let's say you wanted to create bingo cards that included all sorts of different words that somebody might say maybe in a TV show or a meeting or a class or something like that. Each one has got to be different. If everybody has the same bingo card then, of course, then everybody would win at the same time. So you need to randomize them. You have to start with a large list of words and then put them into the spots in the bingo card. This could be hard to do manually. So it is an ideal task for doing in an app like Numbers. Let's see how we would go about it. 
We'll start with a blank sheet, like this. The first thing we're going to do is create the bingo card itself. So everything we're doing here is more about the formatting and styling than about any functions. We want to have a 5 x 5 bingo card. So, the default sheet is a little bit bigger than that. We'll shrink it a little bit until we have 5 columns across and we will shrink the rows until we have just five rows as well. We're not going to use the Header column or row. So I'm going to go to Format, Table, and I'm going to set the number of Headers to zero there. We will also turn off the Title. Get rid of that. We are actually going to have a title but we're not going to use the Table's title and I'll show you why later. 
Now we want to have these be pretty much squares. So we want to resize this table. You can do that as long as no cell is selected. So I'm going to Command click here. So I have no cell selected so I've got these kind of dots on the outside and I can stretch the table and make this square. If I want I can go into Format and then Arrange and then set the width and height to the same. So I'll do 400 width and 400 height like that. Now I've got nice squares there. I'll also select one of the cells and then Command A to select them All. Then I'm going to go to Format Cell, Select All the different sides of the cell with this button here and set it to be 2 points for a solid line. So now we've got something that looks like this. I'll even select the center cell here which, of course, is supposed to be a given in any bingo game and then I'm going to do Format Cell, and then change the fill to a color fill and then change it to say a gray color like that. 
Now we have something that looks like a bingo card. All we need to do is fill in the values. Well, we're going to get the values from a random list. We're going to put that in a separate sheet. So I'm going to click the Plus button here, go to Sheet 2, and for this table I just need 3 columns. The first one is going to be the Values for the different bingo squares. Now you have 24 squares. So you need at least 24 values. But you actually want to have more because you want to have some people be able to get certain words and other people not. So you want to have probably at least twice as many if not more. I've got a list here of words you might hear in business meetings. I'm going to paste that in. There we go. So these are all the words that will appear. So I've got 48 of them, that's double the amount. Then I need to now randomize these. 
So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to have the second column be a random number. In the first cell here I'm going to press the equals key. I'm just going to use the RAND function right there. Just RAND like this and that gives a value between zero and one. I'm going to copy that cell, double click on B here, so it selects all of the non-header cells in that column, and Paste. So now everyone of these has a random number between zero and one. Now I have all these random values in here. Now if I wanted to I could just Sort By these numbers here and then I could take the first 24 values there. Use a formula to place each one of those into here and then I could have a random bingo card. 
BUT, I don't want to do that for a couple of reasons. The first is that it is a little bit harder in terms of the formulas being used. But also because then this will constantly be reordered. Let's say these were in some sort of order, like alphabetical or something. It would be nice to keep them in that order here but still have random ones selected out of each. So instead I'm going to use a very simple function called Rank. What Rank will do is it will find the ranking for a value in a list of values. So if I look up Rank here I could see that the required parameters are Value and Value Set. So, the Value is this value here and the Set is all of Column B. Like that. So how does this number Rank in all of column B. When I press Return you can see right now with this value there, this is 8th ranked. If I were to Copy and Paste this throughout the entire column I get the rankings for each one of these. So Ranked #1 here is this one, with .99 being the highest value. Every time these random numbers change the ranking changes. But the important thing about ranking is it is unique. There is always a single number 1, a single number 2, a single number 3 because all these random numbers are unique. 
Now all I need to do is grab the first ranked value from here and place it in here. I could do that using a Look Up function. So I'll use Equals there to start the formula. I'll do Look Up and if I checkout Look Up here you could see it's Search For, Search Where and the result values. So what do I want to search for. I want to search for the number one. Where do I want to search for it. Well, that's going to be in the Rank Column here. So in C. Then what do I want it to Return. Well I want it to Return Column A. Now, I could see there is a word there. If I look here I'll find that that word is the one ranked as #1. So all I need to do is Copy and Paste this into all these other 24 other cells. 
But first what I want to do is I want to change this so that it preserves the column in both of these. So that as I Copy and Paste it into other cells it won't actually shift over in the other table. Now I can Copy here, Select All, Command Click to deselect the Center One. So I only have 24 out of 25 cells selected. Then Command V to Paste. Now I've got that in every single one of these. It's is always going to show the first ranked word in every one of these cells. But if I go to this cell here and I change it to 2 it will show the second ranked one here. If I go to this one and change it to 3 it will show the third one there. So I just need to go through all 24 of these and change that number for each one. Thankfully you only need to do this once to set it up. You don't need to do it every time you generate a Bingo Card. Let me go through all of them. 
Now I've got a unique value, like 1 for this one, this one is 17, and so on. You could see that this one is 17. It's going to go here and find the one that corresponds to the 17th ranked one. So we look through this table  and we find it right here. Value At and we go here and value At. So let's make this look a little nicer. I'm going to select all the cells here and I'm going to go to Format, Text and I'm going to Center it and also make it be in the middle there. I'm going to make it Bold and I'm going to increase the size of it. Like that. So now that I've got it looking like I want I've got a Bingo Card that I can actually print out. If I do Command P you could see it places it in kinda the upper left hand corner. I can Scale to Fit but you actually need to go above 100% here. So something like this. 135% seems to work for how I've sized this table. 
I can generate another bingo card by simply have these random numbers change. How do I do that? Well, I need to change just one value anywhere and all the random numbers will be regenerated. So I'm going to create a new table. Use this style of table with no Headers or Footers and restricted to just one cell like that. Let's get rid of the title. I'll select the cell and I'm going to set the cell to Checkbox. Now every time I click this notice all the random numbers regenerate. Just because I'm changing the value of a cell. Since the random numbers regenerate the ranking changes and now you could see that the bingo card changes. So it is this now. If I go back here and I uncheck this everything shifts and you a see it is something else now. So now when I go to Print you can see it remembers the Content Scale. It fits really nicely and I can print that and get my second bingo card. 
If I want a Header here I can add a Text Field like this. I'll put the Text Field at the top. I'll stretch it across. I'll call it Business Meeting Bingo and I'll center it, make it Bold, make it a little bit bigger, maybe move it up a bit like that. So now that also Prints as part of it. So I can just print a bunch of different ones now if that is all I need to do. If I want to do something a little bit more complex and maybe put them all into a document to be printed later what I could do here is while I'm on this sheet I could do Command A and Copy and then I can go to Pages. 
In Pages I'm going to create a new document and create a new blank layout's document. Not word processing but Layout. Then I can shrink this a bit so I can see the page of it better. If I Paste in here it will paste it in on a page. Then I can do Add Page and then I can go back to here. Say let's go check that box again so it changes everything. Command A to select all of this. Go back to Pages and Paste in here. I've got page 2. I can continue to do that for as many as I want and have a document that is already with different bingo cards to be printed out later. This is why I'm using a Text Box here at the top for a title rather than actually using a table title. Because if I put Business Meeting Bingo as the table title and then Pasted it into Pages then the first one would paste fine. But the second one would say Business Meeting Bingo - 1., Business Meeting Bingo - 2 and so on. So just to avoid that I've just used a separate text box so it won't do that. 
Of course you can work on the formatting here making it look a little nicer using a different font, you know changing the style of the line, all of that just to make it fit your needs a little bit better. Also you can take this table here and just with a table select I can cut it, bring it over here and paste it onto this sheet and now you can see I can quickly change the bingo card. Just you've got this little checkbox here that you need to deal with. But, you know, you can still select these two things, Copy and then go over to Pages and Add A Page, Paste In, and there's your next card. 
So now that you've got this built you can easily go into the second sheet here and just change these words to create bingo cards for a different occasion. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.
Comments: 5 Responses to “Creating Random Bingo Cards in Numbers”

Joe Mizell
1 year ago
Thank you! I just did a bingo like this last month and had to pay someone to print random cards using my word list. Any chance you can send me a copy of the template you created?
Gary Rosenzweig
Joe: I don't have any sharable template prepared. But I tried to make it simple enough in this video where you can build your own in a few minutes.
Sheldon
Thanks bunches
TimA
Any way to use images instead of text for the cells?
TimA: Not really. Images can only be backgrounds for cells, not values.
Comments Closed.
Creating Random Bingo Cards in Numbers

Comments: 5 Responses to “Creating Random Bingo Cards in Numbers”

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