Excel practice online, in a real spreadsheet
Most Excel practice is a multiple-choice quiz about Excel. This is not that. Every exercise here hands you a grid with real data in it, you type a real formula into a real cell, and the answer is checked cell by cell — not against a stored string, but by running the formula and comparing what came out.
That difference is the whole point. A quiz can tell you that you picked the wrong answer. A grid can tell you that your VLOOKUP is looking in the right column of the wrong range, which is the mistake you were actually going to make at work.
Free, no account needed
Total the sales in B6
Type a formula, press EnterA1
| Select all cells | A | B | C |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Product | Sales | |
| 2 | Cordless drill | 1240 | |
| 3 | Extension lead | 385 | |
| 4 | Safety goggles | 156 | |
| 5 | Work gloves | 227 | |
| 6 | Total |
Count: 1
Click B6 and start with an = sign. This is the real thing — same grid, same engine as every exercise.
It runs in the browser
There is no Excel to install and no file to download. The formula engine is ours and it runs on the page, which means it also works on a locked-down work laptop.
It tells you which cell is wrong
Not “incorrect” — the specific cell, the value it produced, and the value it should have produced. Most of learning formulas is learning to read that gap.
You can start without an account
The first exercise opens straight into the grid. No card, no email, nothing to dismiss before you find out whether you like it.
Every function, explained and drilled
Each row is two pages: a reference page that explains the function with worked examples, and an exercise that makes you type it into a grid until it works.
Lookup and reference
| Function | What it does | Practice |
|---|---|---|
| VLOOKUP | Finds a value in the first column of a table and returns something from a column to its right. | Practise itFree account |
| XLOOKUP | Searches any range and returns a value from any other, in either direction, with a built-in fallback. | Practise itFree account |
| INDEX MATCH | MATCH finds the position of a value; INDEX returns what is at that position. Together they look up anything, in any direction. | Practise itFree account |
| HLOOKUP | Searches the top row of a table and returns a value from a row beneath it. | Practise itFree account |
Maths and conditional totals
| Function | What it does | Practice |
|---|---|---|
| SUMIF | Adds the numbers in a range, but only on the rows where a condition is met. | Practise itFree |
| SUMIFS | Adds numbers only where every one of several conditions is true at once. | Practise itFree |
| COUNTIF | Counts how many cells in a range meet a single condition. | Practise itFree account |
| SUM | Adds up every number in the ranges you give it, ignoring text and blanks. | Practise itFree |
| AVERAGE | Adds the numbers in a range and divides by how many there were. | Practise itFree |
| ROUND | Rounds a number to the number of decimal places you specify. | Practise itFree |
| COUNTIFS | Counts rows where every one of several conditions is true at once. | Practise itFree account |
| SUMPRODUCT | Multiplies ranges together row by row, then adds up the results. | Practise itFree account |
| MIN, MAX | Return the smallest and largest numbers in a range. | Practise itFree |
| COUNT, COUNTA | COUNT counts numbers; COUNTA counts anything that is not empty. | Practise itFree |
| MOD | Returns what is left over after dividing one number by another. | Practise itFree |
| POWER | Raises a number to a power — the function form of the ^ operator. | Practise itFree |
| CEILING, FLOOR | Round a number up or down to the nearest multiple of something you choose. | Practise itFree |
| ABS | Returns a number with any minus sign removed. | Practise itFree |
| SIGN | Returns 1 for a positive number, -1 for a negative one, and 0 for zero. | Practise itFree |
| QUOTIENT | Divides two numbers and returns only the whole-number part. | Practise itFree |
| EVEN, ODD | Round a number up to the next even or odd whole number. | Practise itFree |
| GCD, LCM | GCD finds the largest number that divides them all; LCM finds the smallest that they all divide into. | Practise itFree account |
| MDETERM | Returns the determinant of a square array of numbers. | Practise itFree account |
Statistics
| Function | What it does | Practice |
|---|---|---|
| MEDIAN | Returns the middle value of a set of numbers when they are put in order. | Practise itFree account |
| MODE | Returns the number that appears most often in a range. | Practise itFree account |
| STDEV, VAR | Measure how far the values in a set typically sit from their average. | Practise itFree account |
| RANK | Returns the position of a number within a list, largest first by default. | Practise itFree account |
| LARGE, SMALL | Return the nth largest or nth smallest value in a range. | Practise itFree account |
Logic and error handling
| Function | What it does | Practice |
|---|---|---|
| IF | Returns one value when a condition is true and another when it is false. | Practise itFree |
| IFERROR | Runs a formula and returns your own value instead if it produces an error. | Practise itFree |
| AND, OR, NOT | Combine several TRUE/FALSE tests into a single TRUE or FALSE. | Practise itFree |
| IFS | Checks conditions in order and returns the result of the first one that is true. | Practise itFree account |
| SWITCH | Compares one value against a list of options and returns the matching result. | Practise itFree account |
| IFNA | Runs a formula and returns your own value only if it produces #N/A. | Practise itFree |
Text
| Function | What it does | Practice |
|---|---|---|
| LEFT, RIGHT, MID | Take a fixed number of characters from the start, the end, or the middle of a text value. | Practise itFree |
| LEN | Returns how many characters a value contains, spaces included. | Practise itFree |
| TRIM | Strips leading, trailing and repeated spaces, leaving single spaces between words. | Practise itFree |
| CONCAT and & | Sticks several values together into one, with or without a separator. | Practise itFree |
| UPPER, LOWER, PROPER | Convert text to capitals, to lower case, or to Title Case. | Practise itFree |
| VALUE | Converts a number that is stored as text into a real number. | Practise itFree |
| DOLLAR | Converts a number into text formatted as currency. | Practise itFree |
| REPT | Repeats a piece of text as many times as you ask. | Practise itFree |
Dates and time
| Function | What it does | Practice |
|---|---|---|
| DATEDIF | Returns the gap between two dates in whole years, months or days, depending on the unit you ask for. | Practise itFree account |
| EOMONTH | Returns the last day of the month, a given number of months before or after a date. | Practise itFree account |
| WORKDAY | Returns the date a given number of working days away, skipping weekends and any holidays you list. | Practise itFree account |
| DATE | Assembles a real date from three separate numbers. | Practise itFree account |
| YEAR, MONTH, DAY | Pull the year, month or day number out of a date. | Practise itFree account |
| WEEKDAY | Returns a number saying which day of the week a date is. | Practise itFree account |
| TIME | Assembles a time value from separate hour, minute and second numbers. | Practise itFree account |
| HOUR, MINUTE, SECOND | Pull the hour, minute or second number out of a time. | Practise itFree account |
| TIMEVALUE | Converts a time written as text into a real time value. | Practise itFree account |
Finance
| Function | What it does | Practice |
|---|---|---|
| PMT | Works out the fixed periodic payment on a loan, given the amount, rate and number of periods. | Practise itFree account |
| PV | Returns what a series of future payments, or a future lump sum, is worth now. | Practise itFree account |
| FV | Returns what regular deposits, plus any starting balance, will grow to. | Practise itFree account |
| RATE | Works out the interest rate implied by a payment, a term and an amount. | Practise itFree account |
| CUMIPMT, CUMPRINC | Total the interest, or the capital, paid between any two payment numbers of a loan. | Practise itFree account |
| DB | Returns the depreciation of an asset for one period, using the fixed-declining-balance method. | Practise itFree account |
Dynamic arrays
| Function | What it does | Practice |
|---|---|---|
| FILTER | Returns every row of a range that meets your condition, as a live result that resizes itself. | Practise itFree account |
| UNIQUE | Returns the distinct values from a range, with duplicates removed. | Practise itFree account |
| TEXTSPLIT | Splits text on a delimiter and spills the pieces across columns or down rows. | Practise itFree account |
| SORT | Returns a range in sorted order, as a live result that re-sorts itself. | Practise itFree account |
| TEXTBEFORE, TEXTAFTER | Return the part of a text value before or after a delimiter you name. | Practise itFree account |
| LET | Defines names inside a formula so you can reuse a calculation instead of repeating it. | Practise itFree account |
Where to start
If you are not sure, start at the beginning. The first four tracks are free and run from adding up a column to cleaning up text somebody else exported.
Start the first trackQuestions people ask first
- Is it really free?
- The first four tracks are free to solve without an account, and the rest of the core exercises are free with one. Every function reference page and every article is free to read. The variations of each exercise, the daily challenge and the AI assistant are part of Pro.
- Do I need Excel installed?
- No. Everything runs in the browser on our own formula engine, so it works on any machine, including a work laptop you are not allowed to install software on.
- Do I need an account?
- Not to start. The first four tracks open without one, so you can begin typing straight away. A free account opens the rest of the core exercises, saves your progress across devices and puts your solves on the leaderboard.
- Does it work for Google Sheets?
- Mostly. The functions drilled here — SUM, IF, VLOOKUP, INDEX/MATCH, SUMIFS, FILTER and the rest — take the same arguments in Sheets. The exceptions are the newest Excel-only additions, and the reference pages say so where it matters.
- How long does one exercise take?
- About five minutes. They are deliberately small: one idea, one grid, one formula that either works or tells you why it does not.