Most Difficult MS Excel questions

[Kokkerot]

So one of the nerdiest guys in our office went to a couple of Excel courses and now believes he is an Excel wizard.

To impress the boss he will now hold a workshop on Excel for the company.

So today I received this email from him:

"Dear Colleagues.

Thank you very much for the great response and for showing so much interest in an excel/computer course.
I have begun to plan the courses content and would like some more feedback from you now.
Do you have any topics or things that you would like to learn?

Greetings"

So I would like to know from the Excel gurus out there:

WHAT IS THE MOST DIFFICULT QUESTIONS I COULD ASK THIS GUY TO BRING HIM DOWN TO EARTH

Please let me know what I could ask during the course and what I could reply to this email to get him thinking

 

[Sinbad]

How do you land a plane with Excel?

 

[satanboy]

http://www.cimaglobal.com/Thought-l...preadsheet-skills-most-complex-function-ever/

 

[backstreetboy]

But he will know it didn't come from you?

 

[creeper]

How to auto-resize merged cells with wrap text. It is a bug that's been around for years. Merge two cells. Add wrap text to the merged cell. Enter text longer than the length of the merged cell. It doesn't auto-resize the cell. Do it without a merged cell and it works.

 

[creeper]

How to use Pivot Charts on Mac Office 2011 (hint, it can't)

How to led a slider work across multiple pivot tables?

Add a secondary graph to a graph

Calculate the cumulative interest between two periods (this one is easy)

 

[Went_For_Beer]

/subscribes


/get the popcorn

 

[hyarion]

I wish I could remember the question I was asked many years ago. I was fixing pcs and someone asked me if I knew excel and could help me, I thought "sure, it's not that complex". Dude asked me a question that makes the link from satanboy seem like a "what is 1+1?" question. I had to look up the name of the function on internet and even after reading 2 pages still had no idea what it's supposed to do, let alone how to use it. All I remember is it was a method for doing something related to statistics and reporting.

 

[Ecco]

Search the forum for MS Excel questions. I am sure you will find some difficult ones, and you will probably also have the solution.

 

[ToxicBunny]

Get him to explain VLOOKUP, and get it working on a decently complicated spreadsheet...that usually stumps most people.

 

[DrJohnZoidberg]

Get him to explain VLOOKUP, and get it working on a decently complicated spreadsheet...that usually stumps most people.

VLOOKUPs are pretty basic Excel knowledge, I would say it's probably intermediate difficulty. Would still give a good idea if the guy knows what he's talking about.

Do some SUMIFS over multiple sheets while you're at it.

 

[superskully]

VLOOKUPs are pretty basic Excel knowledge, I would say it's probably intermediate difficulty. Would still give a good idea if the guy knows what he's talking about.

Do some SUMIFS over multiple sheets while you're at it.

Ask how do you do a vlookup, but the column you looking for is not the first column.

 

[Fudzy]

It's all dependent on what version of Excel you use as well.

 

[maumau]

Ask how do you do a vlookup, but the column you looking for is not the first column.

OK, i'll bite - how do you?

 

[Kokkerot]

It's all dependent on what version of Excel you use as well.

Thanks for all the ideas. Keep them coming

The version in question is Professional Plus 2010

 

[ToxicBunny]

VLOOKUPs are pretty basic Excel knowledge, I would say it's probably intermediate difficulty. Would still give a good idea if the guy knows what he's talking about.

Do some SUMIFS over multiple sheets while you're at it.

Agreed, but its usually the first thing that stumps people when it comes to more than basic Excel formulas.

And I've found that people who think they are excel gurus generally give that blank look when you start talking about VLOOKUP.

 

[diabolus]

Just ask him about PowerPivot and PowerView , he will need another course

 

[Rkootknir]

OK, i'll bite - how do you?

Use a combination of INDEX and MATCH.

 

[creeper]

Use a combination of INDEX and MATCH.

Or just concatenate and do a vlookup.

This doesn't always work though, but index match tends to hog the cpu

 

[maumau]

Tks rkoot and creeper. Gonna play around with those.