MS Excel Questions and Answers

Answer: D

Correct answer: Animation Scheme

An animation scheme applies a ready-made set of entrance and emphasis effects to the objects on a slide. Slide transition governs the change between slides rather than movement within one.

Answer: A

Correct answer: Empty cells and text

AVERAGE ignores empty cells and text, dividing only by the count of numeric entries. Negative numbers and decimals are included like any other value. The distinction that matters is between an empty cell and a cell containing zero. An empty cell is left out of both the total and the count; a zero is included in both and pulls the average down. A range with three values and two blanks averages over three; the same range with zeros in place of the blanks averages over five. AVERAGEA behaves differently, counting text as zero and including it in the divisor, which usually gives a lower and less useful figure. The conditional forms are AVERAGEIF and AVERAGEIFS, which average only the entries meeting given criteria. An average over an empty range returns #DIV/0!, since there is nothing to divide by.

Answer: D

Correct answer: all of above

A design template can be applied to the current slide, to every slide in the presentation, or set as the default for new presentations.

Answer: C

Correct answer: It is entered as an array formula

Ctrl + Shift + Enter enters a formula as an array formula, which Excel shows enclosed in braces - braces that are added by Excel and must never be typed. An array formula operates on whole ranges at once rather than on single cells, which allows calculations that would otherwise need a helper column. =SUM(A1:A10*B1:B10) entered this way multiplies the two ranges element by element and adds the products - the same result as SUMPRODUCT, which does it without the special entry. Array formulas cannot be edited or deleted one cell at a time where they occupy a range; the whole block must be selected. Newer versions of Excel use dynamic arrays, in which a formula returning several values simply spills into the neighbouring cells with no special keystroke at all, and the older form is retained only for compatibility. Functions such as FILTER, SORT and UNIQUE work this way.

Answer: B

Correct answer: always rounds away from zero, whatever the next digit

ROUNDUP always rounds away from zero regardless of the digit that follows, so =ROUNDUP(2.01,0) gives 3. ROUND would give 2, following the ordinary rule of rounding at 5. ROUNDDOWN always rounds towards zero. The phrase away from zero matters for negatives: ROUNDUP turns −2.01 into −3, not −2. Where an actual downward direction is wanted regardless of sign, FLOOR and CEILING are the functions, and they also round to a chosen multiple. All three take a second argument giving the number of decimal places, which may be negative to round to tens, hundreds or thousands. ROUNDUP is used where a fractional result must be treated as a whole unit - boxes needed to pack an order, or vehicles required for a number of passengers - and INT and TRUNC are the related functions that discard decimals rather than rounding.

Answer: D

Correct answer: 3.14

=ROUND(3.14159,2) rounds to two decimal places, giving 3.14. The second argument is the number of decimal places. That argument may be zero, which rounds to a whole number, or negative, which rounds to the left of the decimal point: =ROUND(1234,-2) gives 1200. That is a detail worth knowing, since it is the neat way to round to the nearest hundred or thousand. The related functions differ in direction. ROUNDUP and ROUNDDOWN always go the same way regardless of the digit; MROUND rounds to the nearest multiple; INT truncates towards negative infinity; and TRUNC simply cuts the decimals off. The important practical point is that ROUND changes the stored value, whereas decreasing the decimal places displayed only changes the appearance. A column that appears to total wrongly is almost always displaying rounded figures while summing the full ones.

Answer: A

Correct answer: Combines the selected cells into one and centres the content

Merge and Centre joins the selected cells into a single larger cell and centres its content. Only the value in the upper left cell is kept; everything else is discarded, with a warning. It is useful for a title spanning several columns, and harmful almost everywhere else. Merged cells break sorting and filtering, prevent selecting a whole column cleanly, confuse formulas that expect one value per cell, and make pivot tables and keyboard navigation awkward. The alternative that gives the same appearance without the damage is Center Across Selection, in the Format Cells alignment tab. It centres text visually across several columns while leaving every cell separate, and it is what should be used in any range that will be sorted or analysed. The third option describes that setting, and the second describes SUM. Merging can be undone with the same button, which restores the cells but not the values that were discarded.

Answer: B

Correct answer: Swaps rows and columns of the copied data

Transpose turns rows into columns and columns into rows: a range four cells wide and two deep becomes two wide and four deep. It is used when data has been laid out the wrong way for what is needed - a table with months across the top when they are wanted down the side, which matters because charts, pivot tables and most functions expect records in rows and fields in columns. Two cautions apply. The destination must not overlap the source. And formulas are transposed with their references adjusted, which frequently breaks them, so pasting values and transposing together is usually safer. The TRANSPOSE function does the same as a live formula, so the result updates when the source changes - entered as an array formula in older versions, and spilling automatically in newer ones. Paste Special is reached with Ctrl + Alt + V, and Transpose is a checkbox rather than one of the radio buttons.

Answer: C

Correct answer: the number of characters in a text value

LEN counts the characters in a text value, including spaces. =LEN("New Delhi") returns 9. It is used for validation - checking that a code or an account number has the right number of digits - and as a component of longer text formulas, since extracting part of a string usually requires knowing its length. Its most useful diagnostic role is finding stray spaces: comparing =LEN(A1) with =LEN(TRIM(A1)) shows at once whether a cell carries surplus spaces that would make a lookup fail. On numbers it counts the digits of the underlying value, not the formatted display, so a number shown to two decimal places may return a different count from the one expected. The related text functions are LEFT, RIGHT and MID for extraction, FIND and SEARCH for locating a substring - FIND being case-sensitive and SEARCH not - and SUBSTITUTE for replacement.

Answer: D

Correct answer: All of above

A slide can be added from the Insert menu, from the New Slide button on the toolbar, or by right-clicking in the slides panel - three routes to one command.