Ms Excel Interview Questions & Answers (2025)

Microsoft Excel is a very popular word-processing tool. It allows users to efficiently store, organize, and manipulate data. Its structured interface, comprising rows and columns, provides a seamless environment for various data-related tasks. With a user-friendly formula system, complex calculations become straightforward, enhancing overall productivity.

Microsoft Excel is developed by Microsoft Corporation. It was first released in 1985 as part of the Microsoft Office suite for Apple Macintosh computers.

In Microsoft Excel, a spreadsheet is a digital grid, where data is organized into rows and columns. It enables efficient data entry, organization, and manipulation, using formulas for calculations. Spreadsheets like Excel facilitate tasks such as budgeting, analysis, and data tracking.

The ribbon in MS Excel is a user interface at the top, replacing traditional menus. It organizes commands into tabs like Home, Insert, and Formulas for easy access to various functions, enhancing user experience and efficiency.

In MS Excel, there are various data formats are available to meet the different presentation and analysis needs. Some common data formats include:

• Number Format: It formats cells as numbers for general use.
• Currency Format: It displays cells as currency with appropriate symbols.
• Date Format: It represents cells as dates.
• Percentage Format: It displays cells as percentages.
• Text Format: It treats cell entries as text.
• Custom Format: It allows users to define custom formatting rules.
• Scientific Format: It displays numbers in scientific notation.
• Time Format: It represents cells as time values.
• Accounting Format: It is similar to currency, but aligns symbols and decimal points
• Special Formats: It provides special formats like ZIP codes, phone numbers, or social security numbers.

In MS Excel, formulas follow the PEMDAS/BODMAS rule:

• Parentheses/Brackets,
• Exponents/Orders,
• Multiplication and Division (left to right),
• Addition and Subtraction (left to right).

This sequence ensures the accurate calculation of complex formulas.

The process for implementing text wrap in a cell is as follows - 

• select the desired cell,
• go to the "Home" tab,
• locate the "Alignment" group, and click on the "Wrap Text" button.

This automatically adjusts the cell height to accommodate the wrapped text.

In Microsoft Excel, the macro is a set of recorded actions or VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) code that automates repetitive tasks. It allows users to execute complex operations with a single command, enhancing efficiency and reducing manual effort.

Charts are used in order to enable graphical representation of the data in Excel file. It depends upon the user to select the chart type. Like column, bar, line, pie, scatter, etc. It can be used as the users select an option from Insert tab’s Chart group.

Yes! The users can disallow cell copying in Excel worksheets by protecting the sheet or workbook. This involves going to the "Review" tab, selecting "Protect Sheet" or "Protect Workbook," and setting permissions, including restricting copying.

Following are the useful functions in MS Excel.

• Date And Time Functions – Now(), Datevalue(), Weekday(Now())
• Math And Financial Functions Like; Sqrt, Degree, Rand(), Gcd
• Index Match – Vlookup And Index Match
• Logical Functions  Like; If, And, False, True
• Pivot Tables

In order to add a new Excel worksheet, users can click on insert worksheet tab, which is visible at the bottom of the screen.

In MS-Excel, "Name Box" is used for returning to an area of the worksheet, by means of typing the range name or cell address in the name box particular area can be found easily within a fraction of seconds.

Yes, the Pivot table can use multiple sources of data but only when the multiple sources are different worksheets, from the same workbook.

Click on more Sort Options > Right Click on  ‘Pivot tables’ > Select ‘sort menu’ > select ‘More Options’ > deselect ‘Sort automatically’.
And the automatic sorting will be disabled.

Firstly, there is a need to change the width of one column and drag it towards the boundary on the right side of the column heading till the required width.

Secondly, it can also be done by selecting the Format from the home tab, and in Format, one has to select AUTOFIT COLUMN WIDTH that is under cell section. Directly by clicking on this, the cell size will be formatted as required.

• Compact
• Report
• Tabular

For locking any row or column, freeze panes function is used. The locked row or column will be visible on the screen even after the screen is a scroll.

1. Password protection for opening a workbook
2. Protection for adding, deleting, hiding and unhiding of sheets
3. Protection from changing size or position of windows.

Syntax: SUBSTITUTE (text, old Text, new Text, [instance Number])

Whereas the REPLACE function swaps the part of the text string with another set of text. The Syntax for this is:

Syntax: REPLACE (old Text, start Number, Number Characters, new Text)

COUNT is used to count the cells that contain numbers, dates, etc. (any value stored as a number.)

COUNTA or Count All is such a function that is used to count any cell value containing numbers, text, logical values, etc.

COUNTBLANK is cell or cells with an empty string.

COUNTIF and COUNTIFS count cells matching any particular criteria.

In order to perform various kind of logic tests, IF function is performed in excel. It verifies whether certain given conditions are true or false. If the condition is true, then it will give result accordingly if the condition is false then the result or output will be somewhat different.

Excel sheet is known for its simplicity, while in the process of calculation of the numbers in Excel sheet, along with giving the final 'sum up' of the number it also calculates the number replaced by another number or digit. In an Excel sheet, the complexity of calculation becomes easy to like for example calculation of payroll deduction or the average result of the students in a class, etc.

In simple words, the VLOOKUP function in Microsoft Excel states: =VLOOKUP(what item needs to be looked up, where you want to search for, column number in the range containing the value to return, return an approximate). VLOOKUP can be employed when you need to find things in a table or a range by row. To exemplify, look up the price of an automotive part by part number, or find an employee name based on their ID.