excel

two actions, two marks: renaming a sheet and colouring its tab are completely independent operations in Excel, so each is checked and scored separately even though both start from the same right-click menu. Spell the name exactly, since any formula elsewhere that references the sheet by name (Budget!A1, for example) needs an exact match. Renaming first is fine: later formulas will refer to the sheet by its new name automatically, because Excel updates every reference to a sheet the instant you rename it — the link is to the sheet object itself, not to the string you originally typed.

merge across seven cells (1), centre (1), the exact theme shade (1) — three separate, checkable outcomes bundled behind what looks like a single click. Merge & Center does the first two in one click but they are two different marks, because merging and centring are genuinely separate properties: you could merge without centring (left-aligned text in a wide cell) or centre a single unmerged cell, so doing both at once doesn't make them the same action for marking purposes. The colour name appears in the tooltip, so read it instead of guessing by appearance — on screen, several nearby theme swatches can look almost identical, but only the exact named shade ("Red, Accent 2, Lighter 40%") is correct, because theme colours are defined by name/position in the palette, not by how they happen to render on your monitor.

MODE returns the value that occurs most often, which is exactly "most common cohort size" — it's a statistical function built for precisely this question, as opposed to AVERAGE (the typical value) or MAX (the largest value), which answer different questions entirely. 1 mark for the function, 1 for the correct range. Including the heading or B2:B5 would give a wrong answer or a circular reference: the heading is text (not a cohort size at all, so it would corrupt a numeric calculation if MODE tried to include it), and B2:B5 is the answer area itself — a formula in B3 that includes B3's own range is the same self-reference problem explained in the spreadsheets notes.

the marks cover: using a formula (not typing a total), summing column G, multiplying by the rate, referring to B2 instead of typing 19.2 in the formula, and formatting as Rand currency — five genuinely distinct actions chained into one cell. Referring to B2 means that if the rate changes, the result updates: this is the core reason instruction 13 ("use formulas for every calculation") exists at all — a typed, hard-coded number is a frozen snapshot that silently goes stale the moment its inputs change, while a formula referencing B2 recalculates automatically. Alternative: =SUMPRODUCT(G8:G30,B2), which multiplies every value in the range by the rate and adds the results in one step — mathematically equivalent to SUM-then-multiply, just computed in a different order.

COUNTIF counts cells that meet one condition — it's built specifically to answer "how many rows match this criterion," as distinct from SUMIF/SUMIFS (which total a different column based on a condition) or plain COUNT (which only counts numeric cells, regardless of their value). Marks: correct function (1), correct range in column C (1), correct criterion "Platform" (1). Put the criterion in quotes, because Excel treats an unquoted word as a reference to a named cell or range rather than literal text to compare against — quoting it tells Excel explicitly "this is a text value, not a name." COUNT would be wrong because it counts numbers only, and "Platform" is text, so COUNT would return zero regardless of how many rows actually say Platform.

five marks: right lookup function, right lookup value, table on the Costs sheet, correct column index, exact match, with absolute references so it copies down — each is a separate, independently gradeable piece of the formula. When copied, the lookup value moves down one row each time (relative), but the Costs table must stay put (absolute): the whole point of a lookup table is that every row's formula searches the same reference table for its own key, so the key must shift with each row while the table itself must not. If the table was not locked, the range would slide down and eventually return #N/A, because a few rows down the table reference would have drifted past the real data entirely, searching an empty or unrelated range. If Costs is arranged across columns instead of down, use HLOOKUP or XLOOKUP — the horizontal-lookup equivalents of the same underlying search-and-return idea.

hiding means the rows stay in the file but are not displayed — a hidden row's data, and any formula depending on it, is completely unaffected; only its on-screen visibility (and, by default, its inclusion in things like printing) changes. Selecting by row headers (not cells) ensures whole rows are hidden, because Hide is a row/column-level command: selecting cells and trying to "hide" them has no equivalent action, while selecting the row numbers themselves targets the entire row as one unit. Do not delete them: deleting removes the data permanently and renumbers every row below, which would silently break any formula referencing those rows by position.

the default order is ascending, which for dates means oldest first — Excel sorts dates as the underlying serial numbers they actually are (each date is stored as a count of days since a fixed starting point), so "ascending" naturally means earliest date first, exactly like sorting ascending numbers means smallest first. Sorting the whole table (all rows) keeps each record together: Excel's Sort dialog, when started from inside a recognised data range with headers, sorts every column in lock-step by the same row reordering. Selecting one column alone and sorting only that column would scramble the data, because that column's values would be reordered while every other column's values stayed in their original row positions — each row would then mismatch its own date, venue, attendance and so on.

one mark for a list-type validation, one for exactly the two items — Data Validation's "List" option is specifically what restricts entry to a fixed set of choices, as opposed to other Allow types (Whole Number, Decimal, Date) that restrict by kind of value rather than by an exact approved list. If Excel says the source is wrong, the separator setting is why, not the spelling: the character that separates list items is read from the computer's regional settings (comma in many locales, semicolon under South African settings, since the comma is already the decimal separator there), so a perfectly spelled list with the wrong separator for that machine's region is rejected as malformed, not as a spelling mistake. If prompted, tick "Apply these changes to all other cells with the same settings" so the fix applies consistently across the whole column rather than just the one cell you edited.

marks for: correct range, data bars, solid (not gradient) green — three independently checkable settings inside the same dialog. By default the bar length grows with the value (lowest value shortest, highest longest), which is what the question asks, because Data Bars scale each bar's length proportionally between the range's minimum and maximum value — that's the entire point of the feature, to make relative size visible at a glance without reading the numbers. Check under Manage Rules → Edit that the direction is not reversed: Conditional Formatting does allow the scale to be flipped (and even allows bars to grow leftward), so a setting that was changed from the default would produce a chart that technically uses Data Bars but shows the wrong values as "longest."

six marks: IF used, AND used, attendance test with >=, satisfaction test with >=, "Flag" as the true result and "" (blank) as the false result, plus the fill to J15 — six independently checkable pieces nested inside one formula. Use >=, not >, because "120 or more" includes 120: a strict greater-than would wrongly exclude a row where attendance is exactly 120, which the wording explicitly includes. The empty quotes "" make the cell appear blank, which is different from leaving the formula's false branch empty entirely (that would be a syntax error) — "" is Excel's way of writing "the text value containing zero characters," which displays as nothing while still being a valid, present formula result. Relative references (no $) let each row test its own values when copied down: with no dollar signs, E4 and F4 automatically become E5/F5, E6/F6 and so on as the formula fills downward, exactly like any ordinary relative reference.

SUMIFS adds values only where all conditions are true — it's built for exactly this "total matching two or more criteria at once" shape of question, as opposed to SUMIF (one condition only) or COUNTIFS (counts matches rather than summing a value). Its order is sum range first (Attendance), then each criteria range followed by its criterion, which is a different argument order from SUMIF specifically so that any number of extra range/criterion pairs can be added after the first without ambiguity. Marks: SUMIFS, sum range, venue range plus criterion, type range plus criterion. SUMIF would not do because it handles only one condition, and this question genuinely needs two (venue AND type) satisfied simultaneously. Match the text exactly as it appears in the data, since SUMIFS criteria compare text literally — "Pitch day" and "Pitch Day" would not be treated as the same value.

one mark for the Line type, one for the correct data and location — Excel offers several sparkline types (Line, Column, Win/Loss), each visualising the same kind of data differently, so the type itself is a deliberate, checkable choice, not just a default. A sparkline sits inside a single cell as a miniature chart, so the Location Range must be E2 and not a range: unlike a normal chart (a separate floating object that can span any area), a sparkline is drawn as cell content, so it can only ever belong to exactly one cell.

marks: chart type, correct data series, title, horizontal axis label, vertical axis label, legend — six separately checkable pieces of chart configuration, each added through its own step in Add Chart Element. Sectors should appear along the bottom with four coloured bars each, because a clustered column chart's category axis (the bottom) is whichever dimension of the data was treated as "groups," and series (the four colours within each group) is whichever was treated as "categories within a group" — exactly the chart-from-a-sheet logic covered in the integration notes. If Excel puts Q1–Q4 on the bottom instead, use Chart Design → Switch Row/Column, which doesn't recalculate anything, just swaps which axis is treated as which. The example's default title "Sector" and axis labels "Time frames" / "Companies" are placeholders, but the paper asks for a descriptive title, so write something meaningful: a chart's auto-generated title is usually just the name of the first data series or column, which rarely actually describes what the chart shows.

the paper says A1:F1 but lists only five names, and B2:F2 are the formula cells. So the five names naturally sit in B1:F1, directly above their results — read the cell ranges literally rather than assuming A1 must hold the first name, since the given layout (one blank-ish label cell in A1, five names from B1 onward) is what actually matches both the instruction and the five results expected in B2:F2. VLOOKUP's column index is 5 because Q4 is the fifth column of A:E (Sector, Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4) — VLOOKUP counts columns from the left edge of its own table argument, starting at 1, so the index has to match that table's layout exactly, not the worksheet's column letters. B$1 keeps the row fixed while the column moves when copied right, and the table is absolute so it does not shift: this is a mixed reference (row locked, column free) feeding the lookup value, paired with a fully absolute reference locking the lookup table — exactly the two reference types the spreadsheets notes describe, combined for a formula that's meant to be copied sideways rather than down. FALSE forces an exact match, the same safeguard against wrong approximate matches covered throughout the function notes. Marks: sheet, names, correct lookup, copy across.

marks: table created, filter correctly applied, SUBTOTAL with 109. 109 = SUM that ignores hidden rows, and SUBTOTAL recalculates when the filter changes, unlike plain SUM, which adds hidden rows too — exactly the SUBTOTAL behaviour explained in the spreadsheets notes, now applied to a live filtered table rather than a manually hidden range. Place B8 below the table with a gap row so Excel does not absorb it into the table, because an Excel Table automatically expands to include any data typed immediately adjacent to it — without the gap, your SUBTOTAL cell would become a new table row rather than staying an independent total outside it. If your Sectors sheet Q1 values match Impact, the visible total is 31 (5 + 10 + 11 + 5), which is a useful arithmetic check that the filter and SUBTOTAL are both working as intended, not just present.