MO-200: the Microsoft Excel Associate exam, honestly described

The five areas the exam covers

Microsoft groups the skills into five domains. The wording below follows that grouping; for the current weightings and the detailed sub-points, download the skills-measured PDF from Microsoft's own exam page, because the percentages move between revisions.

• Manage worksheets and workbooks. Importing data, navigating, formatting worksheets, customising options and views, and preparing a workbook for distribution.
• Manage data cells and ranges. Pasting, filling, formatting, applying number formats, conditional formatting, and defining named ranges.
• Manage tables and table data. Creating tables from ranges, styling them, adding and removing rows and columns, and sorting and filtering.
• Perform operations by using formulas and functions. References, ranges, and the function families: SUM, AVERAGE, MAX, MIN, COUNT, IF, SUMIF, COUNTIF, AVERAGEIF, plus text functions and basic formatting of results.
• Manage charts. Creating charts, modifying them, and formatting them.

The formulas domain, which you can practise in a browser

The function list in the formulas domain is almost exactly the function list this site is built around, and references, the part candidates lose marks on, are drilled across a dozen exercises.

• Relative, absolute and mixed references, and what each becomes when a formula is copied. The most reliable source of lost marks in the whole domain.
• SUM, AVERAGE, MAX, MIN, COUNT and COUNTA, including how each treats a blank cell.
• IF, and where the boundary sits.
• SUMIF, COUNTIF and AVERAGEIF, including criteria written as text with the operator inside the quotes.
• Text functions: LEFT, RIGHT, MID, LEN, CONCAT, TRIM and UPPER, LOWER, PROPER.

The four domains that need Excel itself

There is no honest way to prepare for these in a browser grid. The grid here has no ribbon, no right-click menus, no multiple worksheets, no named ranges, no conditional formatting rules engine and no Excel chart tools, and those absences are deliberate rather than unfinished: the thinking transfers between spreadsheet programs and the menus do not.

1. 1Get a copy of Excel. The free web version covers a good deal of the interface, and a Microsoft 365 trial covers the rest.
2. 2Work through Microsoft's skills-measured document as a checklist, doing each sub-point once in a real workbook rather than reading it.
3. 3Practise the tasks that are pure navigation under time pressure: freeze panes, named ranges, custom views, headers and footers, print areas. These are quick marks and they are lost to hesitation rather than ignorance.
4. 4Build one chart of each type the document names, and format it. Chart questions are formulaic once you have done them once.
5. 5Then come back and drill the formulas, which is the part that benefits from repetition rather than from exploration.

MO-200 or MO-201

• MO-200, Excel Associate, is the one to take first. It certifies competent everyday use: tables, formatting, the common functions, charts.
• MO-201, Excel Expert, builds on it with workbook options, advanced formulas, macros, advanced charts and PivotTables.
• Neither is a prerequisite for the other on paper, and taking Expert without Associate is a decision about money rather than about capability.

For most jobs the Associate is the one worth having. It is the level at which a certificate says something an employer can use, and it is achievable in a few evenings of deliberate work rather than a few months.

What goes wrong

These are the four mistakes that come up again and again. Each one is reasonable. That is why people make it.

Common questions