Excel guides and test prep

Indeed discontinued its skills assessments, including the Excel test. Here's what changed, what employers use instead, and how to prepare for the Excel test you'll actually get.

What the Kenexa Prove It Excel test covers, the Normal User and Power User levels, who sells it now, and the formulas to practice before you take it.

What an Excel test for a job interview usually covers by role, the formats employers use, and a practical plan to prepare in a week.

A one-page cheat sheet of the Excel formulas that show up on pre-employment tests, with the syntax, a real example and the mistake to avoid for each.

What the Microsoft Office Specialist Excel Associate exams MO-200 and MO-210 cover, the format, skill weights, how they differ, and how to prepare.

What the Microsoft Office Specialist Excel Expert exams MO-201 and MO-211 cover, skill weights, the advanced formulas to know, and how to prepare.

How to use SUM in Excel with a real example, the mistakes that cost points on Excel tests, and a live exercise to practice.

How AVERAGE works in Excel, how it treats blanks and zeros, how to round the result, and a live exercise to practice.

How to use COUNTIF in Excel with numbers, text and cell references, plus COUNTIFS for two conditions and a live exercise.

How the Excel IF function works, with text and number results, AND and OR, nested IFs, the #NAME? mistake, and a live exercise.

How to use SUMIF in Excel, the argument order that trips people up, using cell references in the condition, and a live exercise.

How to use SUMIFS in Excel to add values that meet several conditions, how its argument order differs from SUMIF, and a live exercise.

How VLOOKUP works in Excel, why you should always end it with FALSE, how to lock the table with $, its limits, and a live exercise.

How XLOOKUP works in Excel and Google Sheets, how it compares to VLOOKUP, the built-in not-found value, which versions have it, and a live exercise.

How INDEX and MATCH work together in Excel, why analysts use it instead of VLOOKUP, the 0 that makes it exact, and a live exercise.

How to use IFERROR in Excel to replace #N/A, #DIV/0! and other errors, when not to use it, and a live exercise with VLOOKUP.

What the $ sign does in Excel formulas, the difference between A1, $A$1, $A1 and A$1, the F4 shortcut, and a live exercise.

Fix extra spaces and random capitals in Excel with TRIM, PROPER, UPPER and LOWER, plus the cases they miss and a live exercise.

How to use DATEDIF in Excel to get years of service or age, its units, why it's hidden from autocomplete, and a live exercise.

How to use COUNTIFS in Excel to count rows that meet several conditions, including number ranges, dates and OR logic, with a live exercise.

How MIN and MAX work in Excel, how to find the spread, the top three with LARGE, conditional MINIFS and MAXIFS, and a live exercise.

How to combine text in Excel with the & operator, CONCAT and CONCATENATE, how to add spaces and dashes, and a live exercise building a code.

How TEXTJOIN combines a range of cells with a separator like a comma, how it skips blanks, which versions have it, and a live exercise.

How to extract characters from text in Excel with LEFT, RIGHT and MID, how to split first and last names with FIND, and a live exercise.

How LEN counts characters in Excel, why spaces count, how to find hidden extra spaces, check ID lengths, and a live exercise.

How the IFS function replaces nested IFs in Excel, how to add a default with TRUE, which versions have it, and a live exercise.

How to use the * and ? wildcards in COUNTIF, SUMIF, VLOOKUP and MATCH, how to search for a real asterisk, where wildcards don't work, and a live exercise.

How TODAY works in Excel, how to calculate age, days until a deadline and years of service, how to enter a date that doesn't change, and a live exercise.

Step-by-step: make a drop-down list in Excel with Data Validation, use a list from other cells, update it automatically, and do the same in Google Sheets.

How to round in Excel with ROUND, ROUNDUP and ROUNDDOWN, rounding to cents or hundreds, why formatting isn't rounding, and a live exercise.