1-Day Excel Interview Prep Plan: How to Master Key Skills Overnight

If you have just one day to prepare for an Excel-related interview, your goal isn’t to learn everything — it’s to refresh the essentials, cover high-frequency questions, and get hands-on practice so you can answer with confidence.

Here’s a step-by-step crash plan (8–10 hours total):

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⏰ Hour 1: Understand the Job Role

• Check the job description → Which Excel skills do they want? (e.g., data analysis, reporting, dashboards, VBA, Power Query).
• Identify focus areas → If it says MIS, focus more on reporting formulas. If Data Analyst, focus more on lookup, filters, and pivot tables.
• Quickly note down:
  • Core functions mentioned
  • Tools (Pivot Table, Power Query, Macros, SQL, etc.)
  • Business context (sales reports, financial data, etc.)

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⏰ Hours 2–4: Formula Mastery

Focus on 10–12 key formulas you will almost certainly be tested on:

Formula / Function	Why Important	Quick Example
VLOOKUP / XLOOKUP	Merge datasets, fetch related data	=XLOOKUP(101, A2:A100, B2:B100, "Not Found")
INDEX + MATCH	Flexible lookups	=INDEX(Sales, MATCH("Apple", Product, 0))
IF + IFS	Conditional logic	=IF(B2>5000,"High","Low")
SUMIF / SUMIFS	Conditional totals	=SUMIFS(Sales, Region, "East", Product, "Apple")
COUNTIF / COUNTIFS	Count with conditions	=COUNTIFS(Region,"West", Sales, ">5000")
TEXT functions (LEFT, RIGHT, MID, TRIM, LEN)	Clean & extract text	=LEFT(A2,5)
FILTER	Dynamic filtering	=FILTER(A2:D100, Region="North")
UNIQUE	Remove duplicates	=UNIQUE(Product)
Date functions (YEAR, MONTH, EOMONTH, TEXT)	Date-based analysis	=TEXT(A2,"MMM-YYYY")

Action:

• Open Excel and type small practice datasets (10–15 rows).
• Try each formula 3–4 times until you can do it without looking up syntax.

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⏰ Hours 5–6: Pivot Tables & Data Cleaning

• Create 2–3 quick Pivot Tables:
  • Sales by Region and Month
  • Top 5 products by revenue
• Practice:
  • Sorting, filtering
  • Grouping dates
  • Adding calculated fields
• In Power Query:
  • Remove duplicates
  • Split columns
  • Change data types
  • Merge two tables

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⏰ Hours 7–8: Practice Real Problems

• Download any sample dataset (e.g., sales data, HR data from Kaggle or random CSV).
• Do these exercises:
  • Find top performer by sales
  • Monthly sales trend
  • Count customers who purchased more than 3 times
  • Merge customer table with orders table
  • Create a simple dashboard (Pivot + Slicer)

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⏰ Hour 9: Review Common Interview Questions

Technical Qs:

1. Difference between VLOOKUP and INDEX+MATCH?
2. How to remove duplicates without affecting original data?
3. How do you handle missing data in Excel?
4. How to extract month name from a date?
5. What is the difference between Absolute and Relative cell references?

Scenario Qs:

1. “You have sales data; find the top 3 regions by revenue.”
2. “Find customers who purchased in Jan but not in Feb.”
3. “Your report shows wrong totals—how do you troubleshoot?”

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⏰ Hour 10: Mock Drill

• Set a 30-min timer.
• Ask a friend (or yourself) to give you 5 tasks on a dataset.
• Solve them without Google — this simulates test conditions.
• After the drill, check your answers and note mistakes.

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💡 Last-Minute Tips for the Interview

• Think out loud → Even if you don’t know the answer, walk through your approach.
• Show shortcut keys (Ctrl+T for tables, Alt+N+V for Pivot Tables) — looks impressive.
• Focus on accuracy first, speed later — wrong answers ruin trust.

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