Excel Proficiency Testing

Mark needs to determine someone's proficiency with Excel and is wondering if there are any tests available that can run without the installation of any special software, macros, flash, or the like.

The short answer is that it depends—on lots of things. Proficiency tests are designed to measure how well someone does at a certain task. Excel is a tool you can use to accomplish some tasks, but it isn't a task itself. For example, a proficiency test may indicate how well someone does at creating pie charts, but may not do well on PivotTables, lookup formulas, or conditional formatting.

Because the number of things you can do with Excel is so large, many people develop their own in-house tests that, again, are geared toward specific tasks. An example would be to create a worksheet that has assorted raw data and then ask the user to do something with that data to reach a desired goal. You might even provide a question or two that direct the user to create a worksheet to solve the question.

If you prefer to not develop your own proficiency test, you should try doing a search on Google for what you need. For instance, you might search for "Excel proficiency tests" (without the quote marks). If you want to limit the results further, add additional search terms that reflect the specific skills you want to test. For example, you could search for "Excel proficiency tests charts" or "Excel proficiency tests PivotTables."

Finally, here are some specific resources pointed out by some ExcelTips subscribers:

http://www.proveituk.com/
http://Office.Microsoft.com/en-us/excel/Q2
http://www.snowcrest.net/dsp/Excel_Q.htm