About Excel Practice
Excel Practice is a place to practise Excel by doing it: 103 short lessons in 18 modules, each one a real grid you type formulas into and get marked on straight away.
How a lesson is built
Every lesson has the same shape, and the shape is the point. It tells you the idea first, then shows you a formula and has you type it. Then it asks what a small change would return, has you write one yourself, and adds one thing at a time until you build a formula with no example in front of you. The last step is usually the mistake people make with that function, so you meet it here rather than in a report at work.
Nothing is asked before it has been taught. A lesson never uses a function or a reference style that an earlier lesson has not covered, and the order of the 18 modules follows what each one needs from the ones before it.
Each lesson ends with two to four things you can now do that you could not before. They are written before the steps are, and the steps have to earn them.
How a lesson is checked
- The answer key is computed, not typed. Every expected value comes from the same formula engine that marks your answer, so a lesson cannot carry a number the engine would disagree with.
- A second engine checks the first. Every formula in every shipped lesson is also evaluated by an independent spreadsheet engine in the test suite, and the two have to agree or the disagreement has to be explained in writing. Where Excel and that engine differ, the lesson follows Excel.
- The build refuses a broken lesson. Before the site is built, a checker plays every step: the solution must pass, the feedback must not give the answer away, and a "fix this formula" step must actually be broken in the way it says.
- Every kind of step is played by a test. The tests play each one through the real runner and require exactly one way to answer, because a second button that does nothing is a lesson nobody can finish.
Who makes it
Excel Practice is independent. The lessons are written by hand and checked by machine, here, by the people who read the contact address.
Write to us
A step that marked you wrong when you were right, a lesson you want that is not here, or a team you want to train: [email protected]. The contact page says what to include.