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Excel Interview Prep: Top 50 Practice Problems
A graded path through the exact skills employers screen for — lookups, nested IF, conditional sums, and error-proofing. Progress saves automatically.
Audit missing SKUs with ISNA
Before the price report ships, QA wants a simple audit answer for the SKU in E2: is it missing from the price list in A2:A6 or not? Put TRUE (missing) or FALSE (present) in the Missing? cell D2. This is an audit question — you want the TRUE/FALSE itself, not a wrapped-up message.
Average three exam scores
You're a teacher wrapping up an exam: the scores for Alex, Betty, and Chris are already in B2:B4, and the report still needs the class average. Fill the Average cell B5 with the mean of the three scores.
Build a mailing list in one cell (TEXTJOIN)
Marketing needs the newsletter recipients as one paste-ready line for the email tool — not a column to copy cell by cell. The addresses sit in A2:A5. Combine them into a single semicolon-separated line in the Mailing list cell C2.
Calculate 5-year CAGR in Excel
A friend asks you to evaluate an investment: it grew from the start value in B1 to the end value in B2 over the years in B3, and they want its annualized rate to compare with other options. Fill the CAGR cell B4 with the compound annual growth rate. Return the rate as a decimal (for example 0.1 for 10%).
Calculate tiered sales commission (IF)
Quarter-end is here and sales ops needs commission run for the team in B2:B5. The plan has three tiers: 8% on sales of at least 10,000, 5% on sales of at least 5,000, and 3% below that. Fill the Commission cells D2:D5 with each person's payout.
Capitalize customer names (PROPER)
A partner exported their CRM with no data hygiene: customer names in A2:A5 arrive as john smith, MARY JOHNSON and worse. Before the names go into the quarterly report, fill Proper name with a PROPER formula so every name is capitalized cleanly, starting in C2 and filling down to C5.
Check if cell contains specific text (IF + SEARCH)
Customer support needs to triage incoming tickets in A2:A5. If a ticket's message contains the word Urgent (case-insensitive), label it as Priority; otherwise, label it as Normal. Fill the Priority status cells B2:B5 using an IF formula that checks for substring presence.
Clean extra spaces from imported names (TRIM)
A CRM export landed in your inbox, and every customer name carries stray spaces — leading, trailing, even doubles in the middle. Your mail merge will bounce on all of them. Fill the Cleaned name cells C2:C5 so each name from A2:A5 is trimmed to a single normal form.
Compare a score to the middle value
You're analyzing a class quiz: the five scores are already entered in A2:A6, and you want to know whether the first student's score in A2 sits above, below, or right at the middle of the class. Fill the vs Middle cell B2 — return Above, Below, or Equal.
Convert a score into a letter grade (nested IF)
It's report-card season: exam scores are already entered, and the school system needs a letter grade beside each one. Fill the Letter cell B2 with a grade for the score in A2: A for scores ≥90, B for ≥80, C for ≥70, otherwise D.
Count passing scores (COUNTIF)
You just finished grading an exam for an adult-education class. The passing line is 60 points, and the grade report needs one number at the top: how many of the eight students in B2:B9 passed. Fill the Passed count cell D2.
Count product code characters (LEN)
Shipping labels only fit a fixed number of characters, and every product code in A2:A5 is a different length — PRD-1023 is not the same width as SKU-9. Fill Code length in C2:C5 with how many characters each code contains. The dash counts.
Count who actually signed up (COUNTA)
Ten colleagues were invited to a workshop and the sign-up sheet is in B2:B11 — some wrote their name, some left the cell blank. The venue only fits confirmed attendees, so count how many cells in B2:B11 are not empty. Put the headcount in the Confirmed cell D2.
Default to zero on missing discount (VLOOKUP + IFERROR)
You are processing store checkouts. Members get a discount based on their VIP tier in columns A–B (Bronze 5%, Silver 10%, Gold 15%, Platinum 20%). Non-VIP customers have standard tiers like 'Regular' or 'None' that are NOT in the VIP table, causing a naked VLOOKUP to fail with #N/A. Fill the Discount cells E2:E5 using VLOOKUP wrapped in IFERROR (or IFNA) so missing tiers safely default to 0.
Extract a category code (LEFT)
Your inventory sheet packs everything into one product code like PRD-1023: the first three letters are the category, the rest is the serial. Before you can build a category filter, the report needs a separate Category code column. Fill C2:C5 from the codes in A2:A5.
Extract the serial from a product code (MID)
Warehouse labels use one fixed format, PRD-1023-A: three letters, a dash, a four-digit serial, another dash, and a suffix letter. The packing report only needs the serial — characters 5 through 8. Fill Serial in C2:C5 from the codes in A2:A5.
Find tax bracket using approximate match (VLOOKUP)
HR needs to compute the withholding tax rate for each employee's annual taxable income. The reference table in columns A–B lists income thresholds in ascending order (0, $30,000, $60,000, $100,000) and their corresponding tax rates. Fill the Tax rate cells F2:F4 using VLOOKUP with approximate match so each employee is assigned the rate matching their income tier in E2:E4.
Find who earns a given salary (INDEX + MATCH)
Payroll flagged one salary amount for audit, but the query came back as a number — you need the person. The roster keeps names in the first column and salaries in the last, and the amount to trace sits in E2. Return the matching employee's name in the Employee cell F2.
Flag a double-booked order (COUNTIF)
A customer swears they were charged twice, and the order log looks suspicious: order ID ORD-1042 might have been booked more than once. Before refunding anything, count how many rows in A2:A11 carry that exact ID. The disputed ID is already sitting in D1. Put the answer in the Occurrences cell D2.
Handle missing SKUs in a lookup (IFERROR)
Customer service forwarded an order list, and one of the SKUs was discontinued — it is not in the price list anymore, so a plain lookup would blow up with an error in the middle of your report. Fill the Unit price cells F2:F4 so every order row either shows the matched price or the text Not found.
Join first and last names (CONCAT)
The payroll system imported first names into column A and last names into column B, but the email template needs one full-name field. In Full name, write a formula that joins A2 and B2 with a single space — C2 should read like Alice Wang. Start in C2, then fill down to C5.
Look up an employee's department (VLOOKUP)
You're in an HR screen and the interviewer slides over an employee directory: IDs, names and departments in A2:C5. Given the ID in E2, write a formula in the Department cell F2 that reports which department that employee works in.
Look up salary by employee ID (XLOOKUP)
You are putting together a department salary report. Employee IDs and departments are already filled in, but the Matched salary column is still empty. Write a formula in G2:G6 so each row looks up the salary for the employee ID in column E from the staff roster in columns A–C.
Look up unit price by SKU (VLOOKUP)
You run a small warehouse. The price list on the left has every SKU, but the order sheet on the right still needs unit prices. Fill the Unit price cells F2:F4 so each order row pulls the price for its SKU from the price list in columns A–C.
Multiply quantity × unit price (* / PRODUCT)
An order sheet lists quantity in A2:A5 and unit price in B2:B5. Fill Line total in C2:C5 with quantity times price for each row. Excel has no dedicated “multiply function” — use * or PRODUCT.
Pull multiple columns for an employee (VLOOKUP)
You are building an employee profile card. Given an employee ID in F2, pull their Department into G2 and City into H2 from the master employee directory in columns A–D. Lock the table reference with $ so the lookup formula remains stable across columns.
Regional sales with two filters (SUMIFS)
You run the numbers for a tea chain. The East-region manager asks: how much Oolong revenue did East actually book? The log is in A2:C11 — Region in A, Product in B, Amount in C — and the requested region is in E1. Total only the rows that are East AND Oolong, and put the sum in the East Oolong total cell E2.
Remove duplicate contacts (UNIQUE)
Your marketing sheet collects signups from three forms, so the same contact shows up several times in A2:A7. The email tool needs a clean list: put a UNIQUE formula in Unique list so the first unique contact lands in C2 — the full deduplicated list then spills straight down.
Round unit prices to whole numbers (ROUND)
A price list stores messy decimals in A2:A5. Finance wants whole-number amounts for the invoice. Fill Rounded in B2:B5 by rounding each price to 0 decimal places — half goes away from zero, same as Excel ROUND.
Show the weekday from a date (TEXT / WEEKDAY)
A schedule sheet lists dates in A2:A5, but the report needs the weekday name next to each one. Fill Weekday in B2:B5 so each row shows an English abbreviation such as Wed or Mon. Use a formula that follows the date in column A — a hardcoded Wed fails as soon as A2 changes.
Sum A1 and A2 with a formula
Your shop just opened and its first two months of revenue are recorded in A1 and A2. Fill the output cell A3 with the total revenue for both months.
Total sales for one region (SUMIF)
The quarterly ledger in A2:B7 mixes four regions into one running list. Regional review is tomorrow and the North team wants their number, not the company total. Put the North-region sales total in the Total sales cell E2, driven by the region name in D2.
Unit prices that survive bad data (IFERROR)
An order's unit price is Total divided by Qty — until someone types 0 as the quantity and every division in the report turns into #DIV/0!. Build the safe version in Unit price cell D2: show the normal price when the math works, and the text "Check qty" when the division blows up.
Weighted final grade with SUMPRODUCT
Your course grade is not a plain average — the final exam counts for more than the homework. The grading sheet in A2:C5 lists each component's score and its weight (weights sum to 1). Compute the final grade in the Final grade cell E2 by pairing each score with its weight in one formula.
XLOOKUP misses without blowing up (IFERROR)
Customer service keeps typing SKUs that stopped existing, and every miss splatters #N/A across the price report. Look up the price for the SKU in E2 from the list in A2:C6, and return the text "Not found" instead of an error. Fill the Price cell F2 — two ways solve this, and one of them doesn't even need IFERROR.
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