![]() A message to the user at the top of the screen and a simple cell reference (=A110) provides the eight-character password. Place the RAND() functions into cells F100:F107 to obscure the spreadsheet’s workings. Here’s how to combine the functions into a spreadsheet. Now all we need is a CONCATENATE() function in cell A110 to assemble the password from those eight cells. If you simply fill the IF, CHAR*(), and RAND() statements down seven rows, you’ll get a matrix of cells in the range A100:A107 that will form your password. In cell A100, we place a CHAR() function with the cell address of our IF statement in the parentheses:Ĭell A100 will now contain a number from zero to nine, a lowercase letter, or an uppercase letter. Now that our IF statement in cell E100 returns a number from one of these three ranges, it’s time to use that value to generate an ASCII character. The functions to generate these number ranges are, respectively: By consulting an ASCII table ( click here to download an ACSII table from CNET’s ), we know that the codes for numbers are between 48 and 57, lowercase letters are between 97 and 122, and uppercase letters are between 65 and 90. Next up are a trio of RAND() functions to generate the ASCII values of numbers and letters. With the RAND statement in cell F100, the function in cell E100 looks like this: ![]() If it’s greater than five, we’ll use another IF function to see if we’ll use an uppercase (6-10) letter by referring to the value in cell G100 or a lowercase (11-15) letter by using the value in cell H100. Next, I used nested IF functions to provide three possibilities: If the number is between one and five, we’ll refer to cell I100, where we’ll generate the value for a numeric character. To begin, I want to generate a number between one and 15 using this code: For this spreadsheet, I wanted an equal chance of generating an uppercase letter, a lowercase letter, and a number. However, if you multiply this number by a particular value, you can generate a number within a specified range. By itself, the function returns a decimal value between 0 and 1. The heart of the random password generator is the RAND() function. Returns the character with the ASCII number provided in the argumentĬombines the characters in eight cells into an eight-character password Test the generated number to determine the character type Generate a random number within a given range The following information about how I designed the spreadsheet should be helpful if you want to alter the design to generate passwords that are even more “random.” Here is the method I used to combine several Excel functions (see Figure A) to build the password generator. ![]() And beware, some users may want to write down their random password and keep it near their PC, a strategy that defeats the purpose. Of course, convincing your users to adopt them instead of something more easily cracked is your next task. After opening the spreadsheet, simply press the key to generate a random password that can be assigned to users.Īs you can see, Excel makes it easy to generate random passwords on the fly. Even better, the password generator lets you combine uppercase and lowercase letters with numbers to make the password even more difficult to guess.Ĭlick here to download a copy of the password generator spreadsheet. By combining a series of worksheet functions, you can generate a random, eight-character password with one keystroke. The alternative, assigning unique passwords for hundreds of users, was a daunting task.įortunately, Microsoft Excel offers a solution. He mentioned users who select their favorite sports team, a password that can be easily guessed. For others, including young and inexperienced users, security is often an afterthought.įor example, a network specialist I know recently mentioned problems he has experienced with users who choose their own passwords. See how you can use a downloadable Excel spreadsheet for creating random passwords.įor IT pros, security is an ever-present concern in the enterprise. This might be important to you if you want to remove some of those that are commonly confused, such as 0 and O, or S and 5, or I and l, etc, etc.Lock IT Down: Generate random passwords in Excel ![]() The good thing about this function in particular, is that it allows you to define the letters and symbols used in all of your random passwords. Now, I am not sure where I originally found this script, or if it is the most efficient way to generate a password in PHP, but it has served me well over the year and I have used it in a few projects.
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