We all know someone who proudly calls themselves a spreadsheet master, Excel nerd, or even a spreadsheet ninja. But where are you at with your Excel skills?

Chances are there’s a whole lot more to Excel than you realise, and understanding your Excel skill level not only impacts the way you work, but it matters for your career too. Excel is one of the most requested skills in job descriptions. Higher proficiency will not only improve your productivity but also give you an edge against the crowd and open doors to new opportunities.

Why Assessing Your Excel Skill Level Is Important

Beyond simple curiosity, understanding where you stand comes with real professional and personal benefits. Employers often expect at the very least basic Excel skills, if not proficiency. And in many roles, more advanced skills are required.

As such, by assessing your level, you’ll not only meet workplace expectations but also uncover opportunities to save time, boost efficiency, and strengthen your career prospects. But as you become more proficient in Excel, you’ll also find personal uses, such as building a household budget, planning personal finances, or tracking a fitness routine.

Excel Skill Level Framework

To figure out where you stand, the first step is to know the four main tiers of Excel proficiency. Take a look at each tier to gauge which tools you can confidently use and the complexity of tasks you can handle:

  1. Beginner – Your basic Excel functions such as entering data, formatting cells, and performing basic calculations using simple formulas like SUM or AVERAGE.
  2. Intermediate – You’re comfortable with functions such as IF statements, VLOOKUP, and PivotTables, and can start building structured spreadsheets for business needs.
  3. Advanced – With advanced Excel skills, you can automate tasks with advanced formulas, create dynamic dashboards, and troubleshoot errors. At this stage, you’re the go-to person in your office for tricky Excel challenges.
  4. Expert – You’ve mastered advanced automation with macros or VBA, optimise models for performance and design complex data analysis systems that support decision-making at scale.

Beginner Level: Core Excel Skills

At the beginner stage, you’re focused on the basic functions, the building blocks of Excel that every user should know.

Base-level skills

This is your basic data entry and editing, applying basic formatting (bold, colours, borders), and using simple formulas like:

  • =SUM() allows you to add up a column of numbers quickly
  • =AVERAGE() calculates an average value across a range

These formulas save you from manual maths/calculator. Examples include using these formulas to calculate monthly expenses and create a simple household budget easily.

Intermediate Level: Data Management and Analysis

The next step up is the intermediate level, where you begin data manipulation more effectively. Here’s what you are proficient in when on an intermediate level:

Conditional Formatting

This lets you automatically highlight cells that meet certain criteria. For example, you can show overdue invoices in red or high-performing sales figures in green. Conditional formatting makes it easier to spot trends or exceptions at a glance.

conditional formatting excelPivot Tables

Pivot tables summarise large datasets quickly, saving you a ton of time. You can also slice and dice information. For example, quickly show total sales by region or product category in a clear, digestible format.

VLOOKUP

VLOOKUP allows you to pull data from another table based on a key value, such as finding a customer’s contact info from a master list. This also saves time, sometimes hours of manual searching.

Basic Data Validation

This ensures only the correct type of data is entered, such as restricting dates to a certain range or requiring numeric input in a budget sheet (as opposed to letters or symbols). It reduces errors and maintains data integrity.

Advanced Level: Complex Functions and Automation

This is where an advanced Excel user really shines with more complex tasks. At the advanced level, Excel users move beyond basic analysis to perform advanced data analysis, automate repetitive tasks, and gain deeper insights.

INDEX-MATCH

INDEX-MATCH is where you start to combine Excel formulas that allow you to look up values in a table more flexibly than VLOOKUP. For example, you could retrieve a sales figure from a dataset even if the lookup column isn’t the first column.

Macros

Macros automate repetitive tasks, such as formatting large reports or updating monthly dashboards. By recording or writing macros, an advanced Excel user can streamline processes and reduce errors while saving hours of manual work.

Advanced Charting

Advanced charting techniques go beyond simple bar or line graphs. They enable interactive dashboards, combo charts, or custom visualisations, allowing you to communicate insights clearly.

Data Modelling

Data modelling involves connecting multiple datasets and performing complex calculations. For example, you might want to forecast sales or analyse customer trends, and by using advanced functions like Power Query or Power Pivot, you can consolidate and analyse large volumes of data clearly and efficiently.

Expert Level: Power User Capabilities

Many of the following skills are required for efficient data management-related roles, including data analysts, data scientists and business intelligence specialists. Not only are such roles in high demand globally, but they also pay very well.

Here’s what you will need to master to become a part of this upper echelon.

Power Query

Power Query allows you to import, clean, and transform data from multiple sources with just a few clicks. For example, you can merge sales data from different regions automatically, cutting hours of manual prep. This skill is highly valuable for data scientists, who rely on clean, structured data for analysis, and they get paid handsomely for it. Mastering Power Query opens doors to lucrative roles, as professionals with advanced Excel and data transformation expertise often command top-tier salaries.

Power Pivot

Power Pivot enables complex data modelling and the creation of large-scale pivot tables that summarise millions of rows efficiently. It’s a game-changer for professionals performing advanced data analysis and reporting. High-paid roles that use Power Pivot to uncover insights and drive decisions include financial analysts, business intelligence specialists and data analysts. Organisations highly value professionals who can turn vast datasets into actionable strategies. As such, mastering this tool will significantly boost career prospects and earning potential.

excel pivot table

VBA Automation

VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) lets you automate repetitive or complex Excel tasks. From generating reports to sending emails based on spreadsheet data, a skilled user can save significant time and eliminate errors. VBA is widely used by Data Analysts to automate data processing tasks and by Financial Analysts to build complex models and simulations, both high-paying career paths.

Dashboard Creation

Expert users create interactive dashboards with charts, data tables, and KPIs to visualise business performance at a glance. These dashboards integrate business intelligence insights, allowing teams and stakeholders to make informed decisions quickly. In-demand roles utilising Dashboard Creation include Business Intelligence (BI) Analyst, Reporting Analyst / MIS Executive and Operations Analyst.

How to Test Your Excel Skills

Okay, so now you know what it takes, but how do you actually assess Excel proficiency? Here’s what we suggest to get an honest picture of your proficiency.

  • Free online tests – Many websites offer short Excel quizzes and aptitude tests ranging from beginner formulas to advanced functions. They’re a quick way to benchmark your knowledge.
  • In-house company assessments – Some organisations include Excel tests in their hiring or training processes to measure your ability to perform real workplace tasks.
  • Self-assessment checklist – You can also run through a structured checklist of Excel skills, ticking off what you know and highlighting areas to improve. This helps set clear goals for upskilling, which you can use a spreadsheet for keeping track.

Improving Your Excel Proficiency

Improving your Excel proficiency is less about intelligence or talent and more about consistent learning, practice and pure grit. At the end of the day, assessing your Excel skill level matters because it helps you see where you stand, and whether you’re just starting or aiming for advanced data analysis skills, there are plenty of pathways you can level up.

Learning resources – There are free and paid tools available. Microsoft Learn, LinkedIn Learning, and YouTube tutorials all offer step-by-step lessons suitable for every skill level.

Training options – Structured learning through online courses, live workshops, or professional certifications will not only fast-track your skills but also give you recognised credentials for career advancement. Take a skills test or consider enrolling in structured training like Priority Management’s Excel courses to future-proof your career, boost your productivity and increase your pay-packet.

FAQs

What is considered proficient with Excel?

Proficiency in Excel means you can confidently use formulas, manage data, create charts, and apply tools like pivot tables for analysis.

How do I describe my Excel skills?

Describe your Excel skills by stating your level (beginner, intermediate, or advanced) and highlighting specific functions or tasks you can perform, such as filtering data, advanced data manipulation, or data analysis expressions.

How to get proficiency in Excel?

You can gain proficiency in Excel through consistent practice, online tutorials, and structured training or certification programs.