15 Excel interview questions asked in MIS interviews

These are the Excel questions trainers hear most from students coming back from MIS interviews.

1. Difference between VLOOKUP and XLOOKUP? XLOOKUP can look left, defaults to exact match and has a built-in "not found" value.
2. SUMIF vs SUMIFS? SUMIFS supports multiple conditions.
3. How do you remove duplicates? Data → Remove Duplicates, or UNIQUE() in newer Excel.
4. What is a Pivot Table? A tool to summarise large data by dragging fields into Rows, Columns and Values.
5. What are slicers? Button filters for Pivot Tables and Tables.
6. Absolute vs relative reference? $A$1 stays fixed when copied; A1 changes.
7. How do you handle #N/A from lookups? Wrap in IFERROR or use XLOOKUP's if_not_found.
8. INDEX-MATCH — why use it? Flexible lookups in any direction and faster on big ranges.
9. What is conditional formatting? Rule-based cell formatting to highlight values.
10. What is Data Validation? Restricting inputs, e.g. a dropdown list.
11. Goal Seek? Finds the input needed to reach a target output.
12. How do you combine text? CONCAT, TEXTJOIN or &.
13. COUNT vs COUNTA? COUNT counts numbers; COUNTA counts non-empty cells.
14. What is a macro? Recorded or written VBA code that automates steps.
15. How do you make a dashboard? Pivot Tables + charts + slicers on one sheet, linked to a clean data table.

Practise these as timed tests on our student portal, or try the free Excel Lab.