Which path is right for me?
Five questions about real Excel tasks. Answer yes only if you could do it right now without looking anything up.
A column of sales sits in B2:B9. Could you total it with a formula you typed yourself, starting with the equals sign?
You copy a formula down a column and one reference must stay on the same cell, like a tax rate in F1. Do you know to write $F$1, and why?
Could you write a formula that totals sales for one region only, or for one region in one month?
Given a product ID, could you pull its price from a separate price list with VLOOKUP or XLOOKUP, using exact match?
Could you look up a value by both its row heading and its column heading with INDEX and MATCH, and say what a #N/A in the result means?
How to score yourself
Read down the list and stop at the first question you could not answer with a confident yes. "Not sure" counts as no. Where you stopped is your starting path: questions 1 and 2 is Beginner; questions 3 and 4 is Intermediate; question 5 is Advanced. Yes to all five also lands on Advanced.
The three paths
- Beginner: Excel from Zero
You have never used a spreadsheet, or you open one and stay on the cells you already know.
- Intermediate: Everyday Excel
You can write a SUM and format a table, and you want the functions that turn a list into answers.
- Advanced: Analyst
You already use lookups and conditional sums, and you want to model, audit and summarize larger data.