Here are Microsoft Excel interview questions and answers for fresher as well as experienced candidates to get their dream job.
Microsoft Excel is an electronic spreadsheet application that enables users to store, organize, calculate and manipulate the data with formulas using a spreadsheet system broken up by rows and columns. It also provides the flexibility to use an external database to do analysis, make reports, etc. thus saving lots of time.
Ribbon refers to the topmost area of the application that contains menu items and toolbars available in MS-Excel. Ribbon can be shown/hidden using CTRL+F1. The ribbon runs on the top of the application and is the replacement for the toolbars and menus. The ribbons have various tabs on the top, and each tab has its own group of commands.
Spreadsheet can be compared to a paper ledger sheet. It consists of rows and columns and their intersection called cells.
Eleven data formats are available in Microsoft Excel for data Storage. Example:
The order of operations in Microsoft Excel is same as in standard mathematics. It’s defined by the term “PEMDAS” or “BEDMAS”.
You must select the text you want to wrap, and then click wrap text from the home tab and you can wrap the text within a cell.
Macros are used for iterating over a group of tasks. Users can create macros for their customized repetitive functions and instructions. Macros can be either written or recorded depending on the user.
XLM and VBA (Visual Basic Applications). Earlier versions of Excel used XLM. VBA was introduced in Excel 5 and mostly used now.
Yes, it is possible. To protect your worksheet from getting copied, you need to go into Menu bar >Review > Protect Sheet > Password. By entering a password, you can secure your sheet from getting copied by others.
To enable graphical representation of the data in Excel, charts are provided. A user can use any chart type, including column, bar, line, pie, scatter, etc. by selecting an option from Insert tab’s Chart group.
By using SUM function, you can get the total sum of the rows and columns, in an Excel worksheet.
Following are the functions available in Excel for manipulating the data:
The red triangle indicates that some comment is associated with the cell. Hover the mouse over it, and you can read the full comment.
To add a new Excel worksheet, you should insert worksheet tab at the bottom of the screen.
Name Box is used to return to a particular area of the worksheet by typing the range name or cell address in the name box.
To resize the column, you should change the width of one column and then drag the boundary on the right side of the column heading till the width you want. The other way of doing it is to select the Format from the home tab, and in Format you have to select AUTOFIT COLUMN WIDTH under cell section. On clicking on this, the cell size will get formatted.
Following are the types of report formats
To provide a dynamic range in “Data Source” of Pivot tables, first, create a named range using offset function and base the pivot table using a named range created in the first step.
If the multiple sources are different worksheets, from the same workbook, then it is possible to make Pivot table using multiple sources of data.
To check whether the pivot table is modified or not we use “PivotTableUpdate” in worksheet containing the pivot table.
To disable automatic sorting in pivot tables:
Go To > More Sort Options > Right Click ‘Pivot tables’ > Select ‘sort menu’ > select ‘More Options’ > deselect ‘Sort automatically’.
To lock any row or column, freeze panes is used. The locked row or column will be visible on the screen even after we scroll the sheet vertically or horizontally.
Format loss in a pivot table can be stopped simply by changing the pivot table options. Under the “Pivot Table Options” turn on the “Enable Preserve Formatting” and disable “Auto Format” option.
Excel provides three ways to protect a workbook:
The SUBSTITUTE function substitutes one or more instances of old text with the new text in a string.
Syntax: SUBSTITUTE(text, oldText, newText, [instanceNumber])
Example: Let text at A2 be Guru99,Guru99
The REPLACE function swaps part of the text string with another set of text.
Syntax: REPLACE(oldText, startNumber, NumberCharacters, newText)
Example: Let text at A2 be Guru99
COUNT is used to count cells containing numbers, dates, etc. any value stored as number excluding blanks.
COUNTA or Count All is used to count any cell value containing numbers, text, logical values, etc. any type of value excluding blanks.
COUNTBLANK count blank cells or cells with an empty string.
COUNTIF and COUNTIFS count cells matching a certain criteria.
To perform the logic test IF function is performed. It checks whether certain conditions is true or false. If the condition is true, then it will give result accordingly if the condition is false then the result or out-put will be different.
Example: For example, you select the cell, and you want to display that cell as “Greater than five,” when value is true (=5 or 5) and “less than five” when value is false (<5). For that by using IF condition you can display result.
=IF (Logical test, value if true, value if false)
=IF (A1>5, “Greater than five, “Less than five”)
Yes. ‘Quick Access Toolbar’ above the home button can be customized to display most frequently used shortcuts.
In Microsoft Excel, the LOOKUP function returns a value from a range or an array.
Right Click ‘Worksheet tab’ > Choose ‘Select All Sheets’. Now any formatting done will be applied to the whole workbook. To apply to a particular group of sheets, select only those sheets that need formatting.
Left /Right alignment align the text to left and right most of the cell.
Fill as the name suggests, fill the cell with same text repetitively.
Distributed, spread the text across the width of the cell.
| LEFT | FILL | DISTRIBUTED |
|---|---|---|
| Ab | abababababababab | a b |
| A | aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa | A |
To move to the previous worksheet, you will use the keys Ctrl + PgUp, and to move to the next sheet you will use keys Ctrl + PgDown.
You will use Advanced Criteria Filter, to analyze the list or if more than two conditions should be tested.
The quick way to return to a specific area of the worksheet is by using name box. You can type the cell address or range name in name box to return to a specific area of a worksheet.
WEEKDAY () returns the day of the week for a particular date counting from Sunday.
Example: Let date at A1 be 12/30/2016
Calculating the numbers in Excel sheet, not only help you to give the final ‘sum up’ of the number but, it also calculates automatically the number replaced by another number or digit. Through Excel sheet, the complex calculations become easy like payroll deduction or averaging the student’s result.
The “What If” condition is used to change the data in Microsoft Excel formulas to give different answers.
Example: You are buying a new car and want to calculate the exact amount of tax that will be levied on it then you can use the “What If” function. For instance, there are three cells A4,B4, and C4. First cell says about the amount, the second cell will tell about the percentage (7.5%) of tax and the final cell will calculate the exact amount of tax.
To disable the automating sorting in pivot tables,
Go to > “More Sort Options”> Right Click “Pivot table” > Select “Sort” menu > Select “More Options” > Deselect the “Sort automatically when the report is created.”
Like IF function, AND function also does the logical function. To check whether the output will be true or false the AND function will evaluate at least one mathematical expression located in another cell in the spreadsheet. If you want to see the output of more than one cells in a single cell, it is possible by using AND function.
Example: If you have two cells, A1 and A2, and the value you put in those two cells are >5 and you want result should display as ‘TRUE’ in cell B1 if value>5, and ‘False’ if any of those values
In order to avoid writing the data again and again for calculating purpose, cell reference is used. When you write any formula, for specific function, you need to direct Excel the specific location of that data. This location is referred as, cell reference. So, every time a new value added to the cell, the cell will calculate according to the reference cell formula.
Prep Up For your Job Interview. Go through Microsoft Excel Training Tutorial to be better prepared.
This detailed MS Excel interview questions pdf will help you to clear the doubts about Microsoft Excel interview questions and will also help you to crack the interview.
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