BeginnerFormulas
Calculate line totals with multiplication
Multiply quantity by unit price to get a line total.
3 min10 points
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Learn Excel by
actually using it.
A simple place to practise Excel, built for beginners. Write real formulas in your browser and find out exactly why an answer is wrong — not just that it is.
No account, no download. Try the one on the right right now.
Try it now — no account needed
Click D2 and write a formula for achievement against target.
A1
fx
| Row number | A | B | C | D |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rep | Sales | Target | Achievement |
| 2 | Marcus Bell | $95,000 | $100,000 | |
| 3 | Dana Whitfield | $120,000 | $100,000 | |
| 4 | Alan Reyes | $80,000 | $100,000 |
Hint: divide sales by target.
Start here
30 exercises, in the order to do them
Numbered so you never have to wonder what comes next. Each one takes a few minutes.
- BeginnerText Functions
Check code length with LEN
Use LEN to validate that product codes are the right length.
LEN
3 min10 points - BeginnerText Functions
Split a full name with LEFT and FIND
Pull the first name out of a single full-name column.
LEFT · FIND
7 min15 points - BeginnerMath Functions
Total a month of sales with SUM
Add up a column of daily sales figures to get the monthly total.
SUM
3 min10 points - BeginnerText Functions
Build a mailing address with TEXTJOIN
Combine separate address fields into one line, skipping blanks.
TEXTJOIN
6 min15 points - BeginnerFormulas
Calculate achievement against target
Divide actual sales by target to get an achievement percentage.
3 min10 points
| # | Exercise | Functions | Difficulty | Time | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Calculate line totals with multiplicationHarbor Supply — order ORD-1046 lines | — | Beginner | 3 min | 10 pts |
| 2 | Check code length with LENHarbor Supply — product code import | LEN | Beginner | 3 min | 10 pts |
| 3 | Split a full name with LEFT and FINDHarbor Supply — CRM contact export | LEFT · FIND | Beginner | 7 min | 15 pts |
| 4 | Total a month of sales with SUMHarbor Supply — daily sales, first week of October | SUM | Beginner | 3 min | 10 pts |
| 5 | Build a mailing address with TEXTJOINHarbor Supply — customer addresses | TEXTJOIN | Beginner | 6 min | 15 pts |
| 6 | Calculate achievement against targetHarbor Supply — Q3 rep performance | — | Beginner | 3 min | 10 pts |
What you'll be able to do
From typing numbers in to working them out
Not a syllabus — the specific things you can do afterwards, and the exercise that teaches each one.
By hand
- 1. Filter to North. Filter to March.
- 2. Select the column, read the total off the status bar.
- 3. Type 34,765 into the report.
- 4. Next month, do all of it again.
Someone adds a row afterwards and the report is quietly wrong. Nothing warns you.
With a formula
=SUMIFS(Amount, Region, "North", Month, "March")
- Recalculates the moment the data changes.
- Swap "North" for another region and you have the next answer.
- Anyone reading it can see how the number was reached.
Written once. Correct every month after that.
After 5
Your first half hour
Enough to stop retyping numbers a spreadsheet can work out for you.
After 15
After fifteen
The point where a spreadsheet starts answering questions rather than storing numbers.
After 30
By the end
The things people actually get asked to do, including the ones that go wrong.
30 exercises · 23 functions · about 4 hours end to end · free · no account needed to start.
How it works
Three steps, then repeat
- 1
Pick an exercise
Start at number one. Each is a small, real situation — a sales sheet, an invoice list, a messy export.
- 2
Write the formula
Type it into a real spreadsheet, exactly as you would in Excel. Nothing is multiple choice.
- 3
Find out why
Wrong answers get explained, not just marked. You learn which assumption broke, then try again.
Questions
Frequently asked
Do I need Excel installed to use this?
No. Everything runs in your browser. You write real formulas against real datasets without opening Excel, Google Sheets or anything else.
Is it free?
The core practice library will be free, including a daily challenge. A paid tier is planned later for advanced projects, interview simulation and certificates, but the fundamentals stay free.
How is this different from watching Excel tutorials?
You do the work. A video shows you someone else typing a formula; here you type it yourself, get it wrong, and find out precisely which part of your thinking was off. That gap is where the learning happens.
What happens when my answer is wrong?
You get told what specifically went wrong — a range that isn't locked, a lookup pointing at the wrong column, a single-condition function on a two-condition problem — rather than just 'incorrect'. The solution stays hidden unless you ask for it.
Which Excel functions are covered?
The library starts with the thirty functions that appear most in real work and in interviews: SUM, AVERAGE, COUNTIF, COUNTIFS, SUMIF, SUMIFS, IF, IFS, AND, OR, VLOOKUP, XLOOKUP, INDEX, MATCH, LEFT, RIGHT, MID, LEN, FIND, SEARCH, CONCAT, TEXTJOIN, TODAY, DATE, MIN, MAX, LARGE, SMALL and MEDIAN.
Will this help me pass an Excel interview?
That's what it's built for. Exercises use the situations interviews actually test — lookups across tables, conditional aggregation, cleaning a messy export — and a timed interview simulator is on the roadmap.
Does it work on a phone?
You can browse exercises, read explanations and track progress on a phone. Writing formulas in a spreadsheet grid genuinely needs a keyboard, so complex exercises are best on a laptop or desktop.
Why practising Excel beats studying it
Excel is the most widely used analytical tool in American offices, and it is consistently the skill employers screen for before an interview ever happens. It is also the skill people most often overstate on a résumé — because reading about a function feels a lot like knowing it.
The gap shows up the moment someone is asked to do the work. A candidate who has watched a lookup tutorial can describe what XLOOKUP does. A candidate who has written forty of them knows what happens when the lookup array and the return array are different sizes, why an unlocked range breaks the moment you fill it down, and which of the two obvious approaches survives a column being inserted.
That second kind of knowledge only comes from doing the thing and getting it wrong in a place where being wrong is free. This site exists to be that place: realistic datasets, real formula entry, and feedback that tells you which assumption failed rather than simply marking the answer red.
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You have ten minutes. Take an Excel problem.
Solve it, learn something, and get handed the next one.
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