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Excel & Spreadsheets curriculum 25 chapters
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206 concepts
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Everything the adaptive question bank can teach and test in Excel & Spreadsheets, from foundations through advanced practice. Work through it in order, or start practising and let the questions find your level.
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A free 17-minute primer — the mental model, the mistakes beginners make, and what to practise first.
A. The workbook and grid model
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Workbook → worksheet → cell: what each level owns and names.
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Single cell, rectangular range, whole row/column as formula inputs.
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Number, text, logical, error and blank are five distinct value types.
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Numbers stored as text: why SUM silently ignores them.
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Empty cell, "" and 0 behave differently in COUNT, IF and lookups.
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Sheet2!A1 and 3-D references spanning a tab range.
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[Book.xlsx] references, broken-link symptoms, refresh timing.
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Leading = , operands, operators, function calls, argument separators.
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Exponent before multiply before add; negation's odd place.
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= , <> , >= return TRUE/FALSE, not text.
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& joins values and coerces numbers to text.
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What changes and what stays when a formula is filled down or across.
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Automatic vs manual recalculation and stale-result symptoms.
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A formula that includes its own cell; iterative-calculation trade-off.
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When text "5" behaves as 5 and when it raises #VALUE! .
C. Cell references — relative, absolute, mixed
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A1 shifts by the same offset the formula moved.
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$A$1 pins both coordinates against any copy.
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$A1 and A$1 : pin one axis, let the other travel.
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Choosing the anchor from the direction the formula will be filled.
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Colon (range), comma (union), space (intersection).
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How inserting a row rewrites references, and when it does not.
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INDIRECT builds a reference from text and breaks the dependency chain.
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NOW , RAND , OFFSET , INDIRECT recalc on every change.
D. Names, constants and readable formulas
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Naming a range so a formula reads like the business rule.
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Workbook-scoped versus sheet-scoped names and shadowing.
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A name bound to a value or formula, with no cell behind it.
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Legal name characters, the A1-collision rule, case-insensitivity.
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A name whose extent grows with the data.
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Orphaned and duplicated names as a source of #REF! .
E. Errors and formula debugging
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#DIV/0! comes from a zero or blank divisor, not from bad data generally.
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#VALUE! is a type mismatch: text where a number was required.
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#REF! means the referenced cell no longer exists; deletion is the usual cause.
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#NAME? is an unrecognised name, misspelled function, or missing quotes.
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#N/A means "not found" — a lookup answer, not a crash.
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#NUM! for impossible math or a non-converging iteration.
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#SPILL! when a dynamic array has no room to land.
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IFERROR hides every error; IFNA hides only the not-found case.
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Precedent/dependent arrows to find where a wrong number entered.
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Stepping a nested formula one evaluation at a time.
F. Math and aggregation functions
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SUM over ranges, unions and mixed constants; what it skips.
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MIN and MAX return one extreme value rather than a total or count.
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ABS removes a number's sign and returns its magnitude.
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COUNTBLANK counts empty cells, distinct from numeric COUNT and non-empty COUNTA .
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Multiply arrays then add: the pre-dynamic-array workhorse.
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ROUND , ROUNDUP , ROUNDDOWN and the digits argument's sign.
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INT floors toward negative infinity; TRUNC chops toward zero.
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Remainder arithmetic and the sign of the result.
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Rounding to a multiple, for pricing and packaging problems.
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Function numbers that ignore hidden rows, and AGGREGATE 's error skipping.
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RAND /RANDBETWEEN volatility and freezing a sample.
G. Logical functions and decision formulas
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Condition, value-if-true, value-if-false; the omitted third argument.
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Evaluation order and why band boundaries must be sorted.
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Flat condition list; the "no match" gap.
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Combining tests, and the trap of writing 10<A1<20 .
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Exact-match dispatch with a default.
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TRUE/FALSE coerce to 1/0 when you do math on them.
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When a lookup table beats a five-deep nested IF.
H. Conditional aggregation
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Count rows meeting one criterion.
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Multiple criteria are ANDed, never ORed.
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SUMIF(range, criteria, sum_range) versus SUMIFS ' reversed order.
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Multi-criteria summing and equal-shaped ranges.
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Operators inside quotes: ">="&A1 versus ">=A1" .
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* and ? in criteria, and escaping with ~ .
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Conditional extremes without an array formula.
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COUNT counts numbers; COUNTA counts anything non-empty.
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Lookup value, table array, column index, range-lookup flag.
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Searching a header row and returning from a numbered row beneath it.
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Cannot look left; column index breaks when a column is inserted.
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FALSE /0 for exact; approximate requires a sorted first column.
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Return the value at a row/column position in a range.
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Return the position of a value; match-type semantics.
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The composable pair that survives column insertion.
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Lookup array, return array, and a built-in if-not-found argument.
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Search order and match mode, including wildcard and next-larger.
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Approximate match as a tax-bracket or grade-band engine.
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Diagnosing #N/A : trailing space, type mismatch, wrong range.
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A lookup returns the first hit; how to detect duplicate keys first.
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Extracting by fixed position from either end or the middle.
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Character count as a data-quality probe.
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Case sensitivity and wildcard support distinguish the two.
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By content versus by position; the instance-number argument.
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Stripping stray spaces and non-printing characters before a join.
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Formatting a number into text with a format code.
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Delimiter-aware joining and ignoring empty cells.
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Splitting to columns or rows by delimiter in a formula.
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Converting text digits back to a real number.
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Dates are numbers; time is the fractional part.
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Volatile current-date functions and the difference between them.
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Building a valid date from year, month, day — including rollover.
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YEAR , MONTH and DAY extract one numeric component from a date.
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Adding days, and why adding a month is not adding 30.
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Whole-unit differences and fractional years.
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Working-day counts with weekends and a holiday list.
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Projecting a due date across non-working days.
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Durations over 24 hours and the [h]:mm format.
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Imported dates that are text: symptoms and repair.
L. Number formats and display
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Formatting changes display only; the stored value is unchanged.
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A displayed 3 that sums as 2.6 — and where to actually round.
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Positive;negative;zero;text sections of a format string.
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Applying percent multiplies the display by 100, not the value.
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m for month versus minute, and the four-digit-year code.
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Formatting a cell as Text before entry disables calculation.
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##### means the value cannot be displayed at the current width or date/time format.
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Colour and condition brackets inside a format code.
M. Dynamic arrays and spilling
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One formula, many result cells; the ghosted spill border.
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A1# refers to whatever the spill currently covers.
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Rows matching a condition, with an if-empty argument.
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Sorting in a formula, including by a key not shown.
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Distinct values, and the exactly-once option.
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Generating a numeric grid as a formula input.
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What the @ operator means in a converted formula.
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Merged cells and stray data as the usual #SPILL! cause.
N. Array formulas and matrix work
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Literal arrays with , for columns and ; for rows.
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Ctrl+Shift+Enter formulas and how to recognise inherited ones.
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Multiplying TRUE/FALSE arrays as an AND without AND .
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Conditional totals before SUMIFS existed, and where it still wins.
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Flipping orientation and the shape mismatch that follows.
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Naming intermediate results inside one formula for speed and clarity.
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A reusable custom function written in formula language.
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Broadcasting a row against a column produces a grid.
O. Tables and structured references
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Converting a range to a table and what changes immediately.
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New rows inherit formulas, formats and validation.
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Table[Column] instead of B2:B500 .
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[@Column] for the current row, and where it is invalid.
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The totals row's SUBTOTAL default and filter awareness.
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Renaming a table so downstream formulas read clearly.
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When a plain range is still the right choice.
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Tables as PivotTable, chart and validation sources that grow.
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Ascending/descending and the header-row detection.
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Sorting one column alone scrambles the rows.
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Sort levels applied in order, not simultaneously.
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Sorting by a domain order such as Mon–Sun or size labels.
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Column dropdowns and how filters compound across columns.
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Text, number, date and colour filters.
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Criteria ranges, OR rows, and extracting unique records.
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SUBTOTAL and AGGREGATE respond to the filter; SUM does not.
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Whole number, decimal, date, text length, list, custom.
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Typed list, range reference, or named range as the source.
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A second dropdown that narrows to the first choice.
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A validation rule that is just a TRUE/FALSE formula.
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Guiding before entry versus blocking after.
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Pasting can defeat validation; circling invalid data finds it.
R. Conditional formatting
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Cell-value, top/bottom, duplicate and text rules.
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A formula rule evaluated relative to the top-left of the range.
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Anchoring inside the rule so a whole row highlights.
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Precedence and the stop-if-true switch.
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In-cell bars and the axis/negative handling.
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Two- and three-colour gradients as a heat map.
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Threshold-driven icons and setting the thresholds honestly.
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Tidy, single-header, no blank rows: the precondition.
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Grouping source rows and aggregating each group without hand-written formulas.
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Rows, columns, values and filters and what each does to the layout.
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Sum vs count vs average, and why a numeric field defaulted to count.
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Percent of total, running total, difference from.
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Grouping dates into months or numbers into bands.
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Report filters, slicers and timelines.
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Edits to source data need a refresh; the pivot cache explained.
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Why clicking a pivot cell writes GETPIVOTDATA and when to keep it.
T. Charts and visualisation
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Matching column, line, bar, scatter and pie to the question.
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What Excel treats as a series versus an axis label.
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A line chart's category axis is not numeric spacing.
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Minimum, maximum and the truncated-axis distortion.
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Two units on one chart, and how it can mislead.
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Titles, data labels, legends, gridlines and what to delete.
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In-cell micro-charts for row-level trend.
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Pie slices, 3-D effects and dual axes as honesty failures.
U. Getting data in and cleaning it
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Delimiters, quoting, and what a CSV cannot carry.
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IDs and ZIP codes truncated on import, and how to keep them.
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Values silently reinterpreted as dates or scientific notation.
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Delimited and fixed-width splitting, including the type column step.
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Pattern-inferred extraction and why it does not update.
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Which columns define a duplicate; the destructive nature of the tool.
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Trailing spaces as the invisible cause of a failed lookup.
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One row per observation, one column per variable.
V. Power Query (get and transform)
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A recorded, repeatable transform pipeline instead of manual edits.
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Each step is inspectable, reorderable and re-runs on refresh.
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Typing a column in the query rather than after loading.
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Join kinds and the key-cardinality trap that inflates rows.
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Stacking files with the same shape.
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Turning a wide report back into tidy rows.
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Load to sheet, to connection only, or to the data model.
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Broken source paths and credential prompts on refresh.
W. Financial and statistical modelling
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Payment from rate, periods and principal; per-period rate conversion.
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Present and future value and the sign convention for cash flows.
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Solving for the missing rate or term.
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NPV assumes end-of-period cash flows starting at period 1.
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Rate of return, irregular dates, and multiple-root ambiguity.
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AVERAGE, MEDIAN and MODE and when the mean lies.
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STDEV.S versus STDEV.P and what the sample/population choice means.
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CORREL, SLOPE and a fitted trend as a forecast.
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Goal Seek, data tables and scenario comparison.
X. Workbook hygiene, protection and collaboration
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Locking is inert until the sheet is protected.
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Choosing which actions stay allowed on a protected sheet.
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Protecting structure versus protecting content.
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Sheet passwords deter mistakes, not attackers.
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Hidden versus very-hidden sheets and the audit implication.
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Simultaneous editing, AutoSave, and features it disables.
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xlsx, xlsb, xlsm, csv — what each keeps and drops.
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Separating input, calculation and report layers.
Y. Navigation, printing and automation
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Locking header rows and key columns while scrolling.
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Ctrl+arrow, Ctrl+Shift+arrow and the current-region idea.
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Selecting blanks, constants, formulas or visible cells only.
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Values, formats, transpose and paste-operation arithmetic.
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Print area plus repeating header rows on every page.
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Recording and editing a TypeScript automation for the web app.
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Macro-enabled formats, trust settings and the risk of enabling content.
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