Excel practice: every exercise, sorted by level and topic

The short version: every exercise here is a small spreadsheet. You write the formula, the page calculates it and checks the result. Nothing to download, no sign-up needed, and German Excel names work too.

Warm up with three exercises

A percentage task from level 1, a conditional sum from level 2 and a VLOOKUP from level 3. Solve all three without hints and you can safely skip ahead to the harder topics further down.

Task The supplier takes the discount in B3 off the list price. Tax from B4 is then added to the discounted price. In B6, calculate the final price. Discount and tax rate are shown as decimals: 0.15 is 15%.

	A	B
1	Quote: conference table
2	List price net $	1240
3	Discount	0.15
4	Tax rate	0.19
5
6	Final price incl. tax $

Task In C8, calculate the revenue of all orders from Berlin.

	A	B	C
1	City	Orders	Revenue $
2	Berlin	3	1200
3	Hamburg	5	1800
4	Berlin	2	900
5	Munich	4	1500
6	Berlin	1	450
7
8	Berlin	Total revenue:

Task In F2, use VLOOKUP to find the price of the item whose number is in E2.

	A	B	C	D	E	F
1	Item no.	Item	Price $		Lookup	Price
2	A-101	Ballpoint pen	4.9		A-104
3	A-104	Stapler	19.9
4	A-103	Notepad	7.2
5	A-102	Binder	12.5
6	A-105	Eraser	3.4

How the exercises are checked

The data looks like what lands on your desk at work: sales by region, product prices, staff hours. You type a formula into the target cell and press “Check”. The sheet runs your formula and compares the result with the model answer, and it confirms you used the function the task asks for. Your formula does not have to match ours character for character.

Formula exercises also run a second check you never see. Behind the scenes a few input values are swapped and your formula is calculated again. If you worked out the answer in your head and typed in a number, or forgot a dollar sign before filling a formula down, this is where it shows.

Stuck? Hints come one at a time, starting with the idea and ending with an almost complete formula. The worked solution with an explanation appears only when you ask for it. Once you are done, “More exercises on this topic” generates fresh tasks with new data: 3 a day for free, unlimited with Premium.

If your Excel is in German, write =SUMMEWENN(A2:A6;"Berlin";C2:C6) instead of =SUMIF(A2:A6,"Berlin",C2:C6). Both are accepted. The function translator lists every name in both languages.

All Excel exercises by level

Each lesson page has a short explanation and two or three exercises. The order follows the learning path, but you can open any topic directly.

Level 1: Getting started

• Add, subtract, multiply, divide: profit, revenue and travel costs
• SUM: one column, then several ranges at once
• Relative and absolute references: sales tax and shares with $
• Percentages: discounts, shares and month over month change
• ROUND: unit prices, hundreds, boxes needed
• AVERAGE, MIN, MAX
• COUNT and COUNTA: numbers, text and blank cells
• Creating and totaling tables: total row and filters

Level 2: Everyday office work

• IF, AND and OR, IFS and nested IF: decisions inside a formula
• COUNTIF, COUNTIFS, SUMIF, SUMIFS: totals and counts by criteria
• AVERAGEIF(S) and MAXIFS and MINIFS
• LARGE, SMALL, RANK: top lists and rankings
• Sort and filter, conditional formatting, drop-down lists

Level 3: Looking up and connecting data

• VLOOKUP and approximate match for commission and shipping tiers
• XLOOKUP, including a value for “not found”
• VLOOKUP with multiple criteria and XLOOKUP with multiple criteria
• INDEX and MATCH, which can look to the left
• IFERROR and error values like #N/A, #NAME? and #VALUE!

Level 4: Working with data

• Text functions, MID, FIND, SEARCH, SUBSTITUTE, TRIM, PROPER, combining text
• Date functions, DATEDIF and workdays, time and working hours
• FILTER, SORT, UNIQUE and finding duplicates
• Creating charts and PivotTables

Level 5: Real work

• Interest, growth rate, loan payments
• Case studies in finance, sales and HR that mix several functions
• The final test across all levels

Bonus: keyboard shortcuts

• Navigating and selecting and editing and formulas, practiced with the keyboard only

Advanced Excel exercises

Comfortable with SUMIF and VLOOKUP? These are the lessons that take the most thought:

• INDEX and MATCH: one function nested inside another, with match type 0 for an exact match. Once it clicks, you can look up in any direction.
• XLOOKUP with multiple criteria: join two lookup values and two columns with &, or for three criteria multiply the conditions and look up 1.
• Dynamic arrays: FILTER and UNIQUE return a whole block of results. The check covers the size of that block and every value in it.
• PivotTables: place rows, columns and values in the field list, including a cross table.

XLOOKUP, FILTER, SORT and UNIQUE need Excel 2021 or Microsoft 365. On an older version, INDEX and MATCH does the lookup job.

What about printable worksheets?

We do not offer worksheets or practice files to download at the moment. The exercises live in the browser only, and that is deliberate: a printed sheet cannot tell you whether your formula works. If you want to rebuild a task in your own workbook, copy its data into Excel and compare your result with the one here.

Frequently asked questions