Practice files

A blank-ish workbook with an instructions sheet and a small list to type up. Navigation, entry and sheet handling.

Used in: The grid: cells, rows, columns, sheets, Entering data so it stays usable

An ugly, unformatted range to format, convert to a Table, sort and filter.

Used in: Formatting that helps rather than decorates, Tables, sorting and filtering

Thirty short formula tasks with a self-checking answer column that turns green when you are right.

Used in: Your first formulas, Relative, absolute and mixed references, IF and the logical family, Errors, auditing and trusting a spreadsheet

Two sheets that share a key, with deliberate trailing spaces, a text-vs-number mismatch and three genuine misses.

Used in: Lookups: XLOOKUP, INDEX/MATCH and VLOOKUP

800 rows of fictional sales data for PivotTables, grouping, % of total and a first measure.

Used in: Counting and summing with conditions, PivotTables, PivotTables beyond the basics, Describing data honestly in Excel, The data model and a first taste of DAX

A deliberately horrible export: merged headers, blank rows, mixed date formats, stray text in number columns. The Power Query exercise.

Used in: Text functions and cleaning up strings, Dates and time arithmetic, Getting data in from anywhere, Power Query: cleaning without retyping, Reshaping and combining with Power Query

Clean data plus an empty dashboard sheet with the five questions written on it.

Used in: Dynamic arrays and spill formulas, Data validation and protecting a model, Conditional formatting, What-if analysis and simple modelling, Charts that say something, Sparklines and compact comparisons, Building a dashboard, Workbook hygiene and handing a file over, Portfolio — one workbook, one report, one deck

A repetitive month-end formatting task, done by hand once, for you to automate.

Used in: Automating Excel: choosing your route, Office Scripts, VBA when you need it

Twenty-five fictional recipients as a clean mail-merge data source.

Used in: Mail merge

Two pages of unformatted text with manual spacing to fix using styles.

Used in: Documents, text and the basics done right, Styles — the single most useful thing in Word, Lists and tables, Images, shapes and page layout, Printing, PDF and sharing

A structureless multi-page report: no heading styles, a hand-typed contents page with wrong page numbers, two uncaptioned tables. Add sections, styles, a real TOC, captions and cross-references.

Used in: Sections, headers, footers and page numbers, Tables of contents, captions and cross-references, Footnotes, endnotes, citations and bibliography, Templates and reusable building blocks, Track changes, comments and comparing versions, Forms, content controls and protection, Portfolio — one workbook, one report, one deck

A letter template with placeholders marked, ready for merge fields.

Used in: Mail merge

A genuinely bad ten-slide deck: wall-of-text slides, clashing fonts, a misleading chart. Fix it.

Used in: Slides, layouts and text that reads, Images, shapes, SmartArt and icons, Charts and data on slides, Transitions and animation with restraint

The same content stripped to an outline, for rebuilding on a proper slide master.

Used in: The slide master and a real theme, Design principles for people who are not designers, Delivering the talk, Handouts, export and accessible decks, Portfolio — one workbook, one report, one deck