Practice Excel online, with exercises that check your formulas

Why practicing Excel online works better than a workbook

A downloaded practice workbook has an answer sheet, and the answer sheet gets opened. Checking your own work also hides the most common Excel mistake: a formula that is right for the numbers in front of you and wrong as soon as someone changes an input.

Online exercises can run your formula twice, once on the data you see and once on a changed copy. A typed-in value, a reference that is not locked, or a range that stops a row short passes the first run and fails the second, and you are told which. That one check is what turns recognizing a function into being able to use it.

Free Excel exercises to start with

These are free without an account. They start at SUM and end with a planted mistake you have to find.

1. Add it up Free
2. Class average Free
3. Best and worst month Free
4. Tax on every line Free
5. Percent change Free
6. Clean the customer names Free
7. The budget that looks fine Free
8. A rate typed into a formula Free

Excel exercises for beginners

If you have never written a formula, start with the Basics level. It introduces one idea at a time: a SUM over a range, an AVERAGE, MIN and MAX, a percent change, then the dollar signs that lock a reference so one formula can be copied down a column. Every exercise explains why the reference formula is built the way it is, so the pattern transfers to the next one.

By the end of the level you can total a column, round to cents, compute a margin and a running total, and you know what a relative and an absolute reference are, which is the one concept most beginner courses rush.

1. Count the numbers Pro
2. Round to cents Pro
3. Profit margin Pro
4. Running total Pro
5. Typical house price Pro
6. Second biggest deal Pro

Excel exercises for people who already use it daily

Experienced users usually have two or three functions they have always worked around. The Lookups, Text and dates and Finance levels find them quickly: XLOOKUP with a not-found value, INDEX and MATCH to the left, EOMONTH for payment dates, PMT with monthly periods, NPV and IRR.

Work mode is the level built for people who get sent messy exports: numbers stored as text, names with stray spaces, dates typed as words, duplicate orders. Find the error flips the exercise around: the sheet is finished, one formula is wrong, find it before the number goes out.

1. When the code does not exist Pro
2. Look left with INDEX and MATCH Pro
3. Pay by month end Pro
4. Loan instalment Pro
5. Numbers stored as text Pro
6. A loan payment that is far too high Pro

What is covered

• Basics (12): SUM, AVERAGE, MIN, MAX, COUNT, COUNTA, ROUND, MEDIAN, LARGE, percent change, absolute references, running totals.
• Logic and counting (13): IF, IFS, AND, OR, IFERROR, COUNTIF, COUNTIFS, SUMIF, SUMIFS, AVERAGEIF, MAXIFS.
• Lookups (8): VLOOKUP exact and approximate, XLOOKUP, INDEX and MATCH, two-way lookups, bracket tables.
• Text and dates (10): TRIM, PROPER, FIND, SUBSTITUTE, TEXTJOIN, YEAR, MONTH, EDATE, EOMONTH, days between dates.
• Finance (10): PMT, PV, NPV, IRR, annuities, total interest, CAGR, break-even, straight-line depreciation.
• Work mode (6) and Find the error (9): messy data and planted mistakes.

Practice on any device, pick up where you left off

Nothing is installed and nothing is downloaded. The grid works on a laptop, a tablet or a phone in landscape. Progress is saved in your browser; a free account keeps it across devices, with best times from timed mode.