Challenges
Real Excel scenarios from actual job tasks. Pick one and put your skills to the test.
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Status
#
Title
Function
Acceptance
Difficulty
01
Look up employee salary grade
You're an FP&A analyst reviewing compensation data. You have a salary grade table and need to find the base salary for grade level "G4".
VLOOKUP
74%
beginner
02
Clean an imported new-hire nameNew
Onboarding pulled a CSV of next week's new hires from the ATS. The first row has stray spaces — leading, trailing, and a doubled space in the middle. You need a clean version before the welcome email merge runs at 4pm.
TRIM
75%
beginner
03
Flag overdue invoices for the AR reviewNew
AR review is at the top of every Monday. The team flags any invoice with days outstanding over 30 as overdue so collections can chase them; everything else stays 'Current'.
IF
68%
beginner
04
Count employees by department
You're preparing a headcount report. You need to count all active employees in the Engineering department.
COUNTIFS
77%
beginner
05
Total expenses by category
You run a small bakery and track all expenses in one sheet. You need to quickly see how much you spent on "Ingredients" this month.
SUMIF
77%
beginner
06
Build employee full names
HR needs to generate a mailing list. First names are in column A and last names in column B. You need to combine them into full names with a space in between.
CONCAT
74%
beginner
07
Count characters in product titles
Your e-commerce platform limits product titles to 60 characters. Before bulk-uploading, you want a column showing each title's length so you can spot violations.
LEN
74%
beginner
08
Round commission to 2 decimals
Your sales report calculates commission as 7.5% of revenue, but the result has too many decimal places for the payout file. You need it rounded to cents.
ROUND
71%
beginner
09
Tag every rep with their commission rateNew
Sales ops just handed off the quarterly roster. Each rep is tagged with a tier (Bronze / Silver / Gold / Platinum); you need the matching rate from the master table so payroll can total the commission column.
VLOOKUP
49%
intermediate
10
Stop the lookup from breaking when an SKU is missingNew
The customer-order form lets the team type any SKU. When the code isn't in the catalog the lookup returns #N/A and the row looks broken in the email export. Wrap the lookup so missing SKUs show 'Not found' instead.
VLOOKUP
60%
intermediate
11
Free shipping over $100, $9.99 otherwiseNew
The store's promotion is simple: free shipping on orders of $100 or more, $9.99 flat on everything below. Your invoice generator needs the shipping fee computed per row before it emails the receipt.
IF
55%
intermediate
12
Bonus eligibility: rating AND tenureNew
Comp is being reviewed before the bonus run. Eligibility requires BOTH a performance rating of 4 or higher AND at least 2 years of tenure. One missing condition means no bonus this cycle.
IF
47%
intermediate
13
Calculate Q1 revenue by region
You're building a quarterly revenue report. You need to sum all revenue for the "East" region where the month number is in Q1 (≤ 3).
SUMIFS
58%
intermediate
14
Find product price from inventory
You manage a retail store's inventory. The system stores prices in column A — to the LEFT of the product names — which means VLOOKUP can't reach the price column from the product column. On the right, you've got a small "customer query" mini-table where customers type a product name (F2) and you return the price (G2). INDEX/MATCH handles look-left lookups that VLOOKUP can't.
INDEX/MATCH
55%
intermediate
15
Calculate employee tenure in years
HR needs to calculate each employee's tenure for the annual review cycle. You need to find the number of complete years between their start date and today, for every employee on the roster.
DATEDIF
58%
intermediate
16
Average salary by department
The CFO wants the average salary for the Sales department as part of a cost analysis. The roster sits on the left (columns A-C); the small summary table on the right has the department to query in E2 and the average lands in F2.
AVERAGEIF
58%
intermediate
17
Look up supplier lead timeNew
Procurement just typed a supplier name into the query box (F2). The supplier master table sits on the left (A-D) with contact, minimum order, and lead time. Return the lead time in G2 — and if procurement typed a name that isn't on the list, show 'Not found' instead of a raw #N/A.
XLOOKUP
54%
intermediate
18
Fix payroll VLOOKUP failing on a trailing spaceNew
Payroll runs in 30 minutes. The timesheet export came in from the legacy HRIS and several names have trailing spaces baked in — your VLOOKUP against the clean master payroll table is returning #N/A on those rows. Wrap the lookup value with TRIM and drag the formula down so every row resolves cleanly.
TRIM
50%
intermediate
19
Strip invisible non-breaking spaces from a web pasteNew
Marketing copy-pasted vendor product names from a supplier's web portal into the catalog spreadsheet. The strings look like they have leading and trailing whitespace but =TRIM(A2) returns the exact same string. The culprit: those aren't regular spaces — they're CHAR(160) non-breaking spaces baked in from the HTML. Convert them to regular spaces with SUBSTITUTE first, then TRIM can do its job.
TRIM
46%
intermediate
20
Look up tiered shipping rate by package weightNew
End-of-day shipping quotes are due in 30 minutes. The rate card has breakpoints — 0 / 1 / 5 / 10 / 25 lb — and today's batch has packages all over the weight range. Approximate-match VLOOKUP picks the largest tier ≤ each package weight automatically, so the same formula handles every quote without an IF chain.
VLOOKUP
25%
advanced
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