Excel Practice Sheets

Excel for business analysts

A business analyst turns a vague question into a number someone will act on, and has to be able to defend how they got there.

Start Business Analysis Practice33 exercises, free, no account needed

What the job actually asks for

Translating a question into a measurable metric, comparing segments, and building reporting that someone else can rerun next month. The spreadsheet is as much a document of your reasoning as a calculation.

The recurring tasks

  • Translate a question into a measurable metric
  • Compare performance across segments
  • Build repeatable reporting templates
  • Document assumptions behind a model

Where people get caught

Building something that only works once. A one-off analysis with values pasted in cannot be rerun, so next month it is rebuilt from scratch — and the two versions disagree.

What interviews test

Conditional aggregation, defining a metric precisely, and being asked to walk through how a figure was derived.

Practice built from business analyst work

33 exercises using the situations above. Work down the levels — each one assumes the one before it.

Beginner

7 exercises · 1 step

One function, one step, a small and tidy dataset.

Intermediate

17 exercises · 2–3 steps

Two or three functions combined, or one function with conditions.

Advanced

9 exercises · 3–5 steps

Nested logic across a realistic dataset, with edge cases that bite.

Prefer to work in real Excel? Download the practice files — the same datasets with the answer cells left blank. You lose the feedback, which is the part that does the teaching.

Other roles

Skills every role needs

These are not specific to business analyst — they are the keystrokes and the misconceptions that catch everyone out, whatever the spreadsheet is about.