Excellence with Excel

– Certification Quiz Questions

1. An example of a “Data Table” in Excel is shown in the screenshot below. Which of the
following is NOT an advantage of using these Data Tables?

a. They automatically format everything and make it easier to sort and filter data.

b. They let you create “structured references” with easy-to-read names (e.g.,
Sales_Rep_Table[Sales Rep ID]).

c. Formulas in the cells of data tables update automatically based on additions,

d. Excel will insert formulas automatically based on the titles of columns in the data
tables.

e. When used with Power Pivot, data tables allow you to “join” data and create pivot
tables based on the contents of multiple tables.

2. Suppose that you want to filter the data table in the previous question so that only orders
associated with one specific city or one specific state show up. What is the most efficient
way to do this?

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 a. Go to the filters at the top, click them, deselect all the choices, and then select the
single city or state you want to appear.

b. Find the first instance of this city or state in the table with the Find command in
Excel, right-click it, and then go to “Filter” and “Filter by Selected Cell’s Value.”

c. It depends on whether you want to filter the data by BOTH the city and the state, or
just ONE of those – the second answer is better for the first, and the first answer is
better for the second.

d. Sort the data in alphabetical order and then hide the rows above and below this
specific city or state name.

3. You have set up a data table called “Order_Table” in an Excel file, and you’ve written a
SUMPRODUCT formula to query the data and return the total dollar amount of sales that
match a specific region, industry, year, and month. This SUMPRODUCT formula is shown
below:

You decide to rewrite this formula using SUMIFS to make it easier to understand, and you
enter the following to do it:

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 =SUMIFS(Order_Table[Amount], Order_Table[Industry], Summary!Q7,
Order_Table[Region], Summary!Q6, YEAR(Order_Table[Order Date]), YEAR(Summary!Q8),
MONTH(Order_Table[Order Date]), Summary!Q9)

However, Excel does not even let you enter this formula. How can you fix this so that it
works properly?

a. YEAR and MONTH don’t work over entire ranges, so you must enter this formula as
an array function with Ctrl + Shift + Enter instead.

b. The problem is with the underlying data – YEAR won’t work in a direct comparison if
you’ve entered the entire date in a cell rather than just the year number.

c. YEAR and MONTH don’t work over entire ranges, so you should change the criteria
to compare Order_Table[Order Date] to the date formed by cells Q8 and Q9 and
make sure it’s within that month using EOMONTH.

d. None of the above – it’s not possible to replace SUMPRODUCT with SUMIFS for a
formula like this because of the need to evaluate criteria over a range of cells.

4. You have written DSUM and DCOUNT functions to retrieve the total dollar amount and
order count of all orders that meet specific criteria, as shown in the screenshot below:

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 However, Excel shows the Order Total as $408 million and the Order Count as 999
because it incorrectly counts ALL the orders, not just the ones that meet the criteria
above. What is the MOST LIKELY reason why these database functions are not working
correctly?

a. You have extra spaces in one of the headers, such as the “Region” or “Order Date”
title, so Excel cannot match them to the field titles in the data source.

b. You have not entered criteria in the State, Amount, and Sales Rep ID fields, so the
database functions return the sum and count for all the data by default.

c. You cannot use a criterion such as the Order Date twice in the same DSUM and
DCOUNT functions.

d. The DSUM and DCOUNT functions are incorrectly referencing both row 7 and also
the several blank rows below it.

5. You are using the database functions DSUM and DCOUNT to summarize a table of
customer orders. For which of the following criteria sets would these database functions
be MOST useful?

a.

b.

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 c.

d.

6. You have created a blank pivot table, shown in the screenshot below, based on source
data from another worksheet:

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 You want to display the total order dollar amount by year and month, and then by region.

The month and year groupings should be in the leftmost column, and the regions should
be in the topmost row.

Which of the following screenshots shows the CORRECT positioning required to

a.

b.

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 c.

d.

7. You have created the following pivot table, which shows the percentage of sales from
each company sales rep in each year:

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 The source data includes only the Sales Rep ID – not the Sales Rep Names, which are in a
separate data table.

If you want to make this pivot table display each Sales Rep’s Name rather than their ID,
how could you do it?

a. Add the Sales Rep Name as a separate field in the source data, and do a simple
lookup in the separate data table to retrieve it based on the Sales Rep ID; then, re-
create the pivot table and include this field.

b. Use Excel’s Internal Data Model, create a “relationship” between these tables based
on the Sales Rep ID as the common field, and then drag fields from both data
sources into a single pivot table – but this won’t work in all versions of Excel.

c. When you create the pivot table, select “Use external source,” link to the separate
Sales Rep table, and then drag in the fields from that one and the Order table.

d. Answer choices 1, 2, and 3.

e. Answer choices 1 and 2.

f. Answer choices 1 and 3.

g. Answer choices 2 and 3.

8. You’ve created a pivot table based on the customer order data, and now you want to add
a Calculated Field to the table to enhance it without changing the underlying data. Which
of the following represent(s) an APPROPRIATE example of a Calculated Field in this
context?

a. “Net Sales,” defined as the Order Dollar Amount minus Commissions paid to the
sales rep.

b. “Average Sales by Region,” based on a custom grouping you set up for the 5 main
regions of the company’s operations (based on state and city data).

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 c. “Sales Rep Name,” where you do a lookup or use INDEX/MATCH to retrieve the Sales
Rep’s name from the Sales Rep table without adding a redundant column in the
Order table.

d. “Percentage of Subtotal,” which calculates each order’s contribution percentage to

e. Answer choices 1, 2, 3, and 4.

f. Answer choices 1 and 3.

g. Answer choices 2 and 3.

h. Answer choices 1 and 4.

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