shuffled deck of cards

I think the attached will do it.
Row 1 is headers
A2 is blank
A3:A54 are the 52 cards "C 1","C 2", ..., "s 13"

In B2, put
=INT(RAND()*52)+1
and fill right to BA2

In B3, put
=IF(ROWS($B$3:B3)=COLUMNS($B$3:B3),INDEX(A$3:A$54,B$2,1),IF(ROWS($B$3:B3)=B$2,INDEX(A$3:A$54,COLUMNS($B$3:B3),1),A3))
Select B3:BA54, fill right and down.

The column BA3:BA54 is the shuffled deck.

What is happening is that, in the i'th column, a random number between 1-52 is being selected and the i'th card is being swapped with the random'th card.
52 columns shuffles the whole deck.

One could hide the 51 helper columns. This may be a case where VB is better than native Excel.

That's great!

Can I push my luck and ask another question whilst I am at it?

Is there a simple (ie non-VBA) way to get excel to work out what the first and second last characters in a cell are? Say I have "2 Black ducks" in A1 and "Johnny went to town" in A2, I would like the 1st character of A1 in B1 and the second last character of A1 in C1, likewise for what's in A2 to go into B2 and C2.

Thanks again.

If "Johnny went to town" is in A1,

=LEFT(A1,1) returns the first character of A1, "J"

=MID(A1,LEN(A1)-1,1) returns the second to last character of A1, "w"

=RIGHT(A1,2) returns the last 2 characters of A1, "wn"

The other text functions can be found through the Insert Function dialog box.

Dynamite!

This is a very helpful forum!

Thanks a million!

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