Going for your MOS certification in Excel?
The Microsoft Office Specialist exam for Excel comes in two levels: Associate and Expert. You take it in Excel itself, with tasks in a real workbook and the clock running. If you know your formulas well, you have time left for the rest.
Lurndo helps you with the part where most candidates get stuck: formulas and functions, from IF and COUNTIF to XLOOKUP, INDEX with MATCH and dynamic arrays. Lurndo isn't official Microsoft exam preparation.
Why Lurndo suits you
The formulas of both levels
Calculating and rounding, IF and IFS, counting and adding up with conditions, lookups, text and date functions, FILTER, SORT, UNIQUE and LET.
Tables and pivot tables
Sorting on several columns, filtering, Format as Table with structured references, conditional formatting with a formula, and pivot tables.
What you practise in Excel itself
Managing workbooks, printing, data validation, macros, formatting charts and keyboard shortcuts aren't in Lurndo. Those are best practised in Excel itself.
No safety net
The final test of every module is a set of hard exercises without explanation cards, to see whether it has really sunk in.
A question at Expert level
Which customer is ride R01 for? Look up the customer code from B2 in L2:L6 and give, in I2, the name next to it in column K.
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ride | Customer | Zone | Km | Weight | Price | Area | Surcharge | Customer name | Name | Code | Area | From km | Price | |||
| 2 | R01 | K03 | Centre | 2.5 | 3 | Bloom Bakery | K01 | Manchester | 0 | £6.00 | |||||||
| 3 | R02 | K01 | Suburbs | 7.2 | 12 | Book Nook | K02 | Burnage | 3 | £9.00 | |||||||
| 4 | R03 | K05 | Docks | 11.4 | 25 | Cygnet Café | K03 | Manchester | 6 | £12.00 | |||||||
| 5 | R04 | K02 | Centre | 1.8 | 1 | Dot Print | K04 | Didsbury | 10 | £18.00 | |||||||
| 6 | R05 | K03 | Suburbs | 5.5 | 8 | Fork & Spoke | K05 | Withington | |||||||||
| 7 | R06 | K04 | Docks | 9.9 | 18 | ||||||||||||
| 8 | R07 | K01 | Centre | 3 | 4 | ||||||||||||
| 9 | R08 | K02 | Suburbs | 6 | 10 | Zone | Centre | Suburbs | Docks | ||||||||
| 10 | R09 | K05 | Docks | 14 | 30 | Surcharge | £0.00 | £2.00 | £5.00 | ||||||||
| 11 | R10 | K06 | Centre | 4.2 | 2 | ||||||||||||
| 12 | |||||||||||||||||
| 13 | Position | Weight | Centre | Suburbs | Docks | Class | Medium | ||||||||||
| 14 | Light | £0.00 | £1.00 | £3.00 | Zone | Docks | |||||||||||
| 15 | Medium | £2.00 | £3.00 | £5.00 | Result | ||||||||||||
| 16 | Heavy | £4.00 | £6.00 | £8.00 | |||||||||||||
| 17 |
How to tackle it
For the Associate level, the first four modules and the tables from module 7 are enough. For Expert, add lookups, text and dates, pivot tables and dynamic arrays.
- 2Functions and referencesYour second client: the Green Fingers allotments in Harrogate. You learn to calculate with functions like AVERAGE, MAX and ROUND, to count what is there and what is missing, and to lock references with $.
- 3LogicYour third client: The Splash swimming pool in Tamworth. You learn to compare, to choose with IF, to combine conditions with AND and OR, and to deal with empty cells and error values.
- 4Counting and adding with conditionsYour fourth client: the Second Chance charity shop in Gloucester. You learn to count and add up whatever meets a condition, with COUNTIF, SUMIF and their variants, criteria and wildcards.
- 5LookupsYour fifth client: Flying Velo bike couriers in Manchester. You learn to look up values in a table, with VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP, XLOOKUP and the duo INDEX and MATCH.
- 7Analysing dataYour seventh client: The Thirsty Owl, a brewery in Ripon. You learn to sort, filter and format a long list, build pivot tables from it and pick the right chart.
- 8Dynamic arraysYour eighth client: Whirlwind theme park in Lowestoft. You learn formulas that return a whole list: UNIQUE, FILTER, SORT and LET.
Stuck? Ask Lurnie
Lurnie is your AI coach in every lesson. Ask your question during or after an exercise and get an explanation at your level, straight away.
- During or after any exerciseLurnie knows which lesson and exercise you're on. Ask why something works, what a mistake means or how else you could do it.
- Fresh examples, never the solutionLurnie explains with an example on different data and helps you on with a question to think about. That way you find the solution yourself, and it sticks.
- Your conversations are keptRead back later what Lurnie explained. Your conversations stay with your account, course by course.
Lurnie comes with premium, with 30 questions a day.See premium
Why does my formula go wrong when I drag it down?
Excel moves your references along. If E2 holds =C2*D2, E3 gets =C3*D3. Handy, until one cell has to stay put, like a VAT rate in H1: one row down that becomes H2, which is empty.
So put a $ before whatever mustn't move: $H$1 points to the same cell in every copy. Which cell has to stay put in your formula?
29 of 30 questions left todayLurnie can make mistakes.
Frequently asked questions
Is Lurndo official MOS exam preparation?
No. Lurndo isn't affiliated with Microsoft. You practise the formulas and functions that come up in the exam, but the exam itself also covers things you need to practise in Excel itself.
What's the difference between Associate and Expert?
Associate covers the basics of worksheets, tables, formulas and charts. Expert goes further, with advanced formulas such as lookups and dynamic arrays, pivot tables, data validation and macros.
Which version of Excel do I learn?
Microsoft 365 and Excel 2021 or newer. Where older versions work differently, the lessons say so.
Is it free?
The first three modules are free, without an account. Conditional counting, lookups, pivot tables and dynamic arrays are in the premium modules.
Start with the formulas
Test where you stand with the first lessons, or go straight to the topic you still want to practise.
Start free with the first lesson