Creating Interactive Quizzes in Excel

J.A. (Jim) Connell Elizabeth Mulig

University of Montevallo USF St. Petersburg
Michael E. Stephens College of Business 140 Seventh Avenue South
Station 6551 St. Petersburg Florida 33701-5016
Montevallo, AL 35115 727-553-4154
mulig@stpt.usf.edu

Introduction
Have you ever received a spreadsheet file that asked you questions and then magically told you
whether your answers were correct? They can be more than e-mail pastimes. Once you
understand how those spreadsheet files list questions and check your answers, you can create
spreadsheet files that ask your students accounting questions. All it takes is an understanding of
a few simple functions within the spreadsheet, and we’re about to reveal those secrets.

They’re a lot easier to create than most people think and it only takes one simple formula to
produce a scoring system that makes your quiz interactive. This means that your answers will be
included in the spreadsheet, but its easy to hide the answers and password protect the
spreadsheet so your students have to work to find the correct answer.

To illustrate how it works, we’ve created an interactive quiz based for a principles-level
accounting class. Once you understand the function, you can adapt this to your own needs by
changing the headings and questions. We used Microsoft Excel 2000 here, but the concepts work
with earlier versions of Excel and other spreadsheets.

Background & Objectives

This document explains the creation of a self-scoring, interactive quiz using Excel. The reader
should be able to create an interactive quiz after reading and reviewing this document.

Practice with sample questions is an effective way for students to study for upcoming exams.
Interactive quizzes, as described here, are one way to provide a set of sample questions to
students before the actual test. Quizzes like this offer practice questions to students and
(hopefully) motivate them to spend more time working homework problems and answering
questions.

By using Excel,
• students do not need an active internet connection to study
• students are entertained enough to practice answering potential test questions
• students gain familiarity with Excel as they try to find where the correct answers are
hidden in the worksheet.

The basic process is to put the questions in one worksheet (Test #1 Questions) along with
marked cells where students enter their answers. A second worksheet (Score) contains formulas
that compare the student’s answers to the correct answers in Score. The column containing the
correct answers is hidden and Score is password-protected to prevent student access.

Step 1: Format two worksheets

Open Microsoft Excel to a blank workbook file. We need two of the worksheets within this
workbook to create the interactive quiz, so the first step is to delete one of the three worksheets
that normally appear when a new workbook file is created.

At the bottom of the screen, the default three worksheets are usually named Sheet1, Sheet2, and
Sheet3. This quiz only needs two worksheets, so the first job is to delete Sheet3. Right-click on
the Sheet3’s sheet tab at the bottom of the screen, select Delete, then select OK to confirm the
deletion.
Double-click on Sheet1’s sheet tab and it’s name will change to reverse print (white text on a
black background). Enter the name Score over the old name, then click on any of the cells or hit
enter.

Format this worksheet to display the quiz scores; one section for the overall grade and one
section for individual scores). Click at the top of Column A so that the whole column is
highlighted. From the menu at the top of the screen, select Format, Column, Width, then set the
width of column A to 18, then center the text. Follow the same steps to set the width of Column B
to 11 spaces, centered.

In cell A5, enter Overall Score: and right-align the text. In cell A10, enter Individual Questions and
center the text. Beginning in cell A11, enter the number 1 and continue numbering down the
column for as many questions as desired.

Follow the same procedures to rename Sheet2 to Questions and format Column A to a width of 5
with centered text and Column B to a width of 60 with left-justified text. In cell B1, enter the
heading “Questions.”

Step 2: Enter sample questions in Questions.

One problem with using Excel is that it does not have a word wrap feature. Long strings of text
have to be entered one line at a time, with each line fit to the column width. For our example,
enter the following text in the indicated cells in the Questions worksheet,

Cell Text
A3 1.
B3 The present value of $2,500 to be received in four years when interest
B4 is 12 percent compounded quarterly is computed by discounting at
B5 A) 12 percent for 4 periods
B6 B) 3 percent for 16 periods
B7 C) 4 percent for 12 periods
B7 D) 6 percent for 8 periods

The correct answer is B, so please format the contents of cell B5 to bold text, to keep track of the
correct answers while working.

Step 3: Format student answer cells in Questions so they stand out

This step has two purposes. First, students have to put their answers into designated cells so the
quiz can grade itself. Second, it makes the worksheet more attractive and easier to read.

Highlight the first answer cell (C3, in this example), select Format/Cell from the toolbar at the top
of the page, select the color or border options desired. When working with multiple questions, the
format painter is the quickest way to copy the chosen format to all answer cells.

Step 4: Enter correct answers in Score for comparison

Now we need to build an answer key to use when grading the quizzes. The first step is to enter
the correct answers in the answer cells on the Questions worksheet so we can work with them.
These questions need to be moved to the Score worksheet, so that we can hide and password
protect them.

For this example, we will hide the correct answers in column Z of Score. The steps to accomplish
this are,
1) click at the top of column C in Questions to highlight the entire column
2) right-click and select copy
3) move to the Score worksheet
4) click at the top of column Z in Score to highlight the entire column
 5) right-click and select paste

Step 5: Remove correct answers from the Questions worksheet

As you may have already guessed, the Score worksheet is both the grade report and the grading
key for this quiz. Now it’s time to clean up some of our work on the Questions worksheet.
Sometimes the last step in writing an in-class test is to remove the marks identifying the correct
answers. We need to do the same thing to our spreadsheet.

Go back to the Questions worksheet, reformat the correct answers in to the standard text format
instead of the bold text they were in and delete all of the correct answers from the answer cells
(just C3 in our one-question example).

Step 6: Enter formula to grade individual questions.

Now its time to enter the one formula that will grade all the questions. Actually, it takes one
formula for each question, but after the first formula is entered, it’s just a matter of cutting and
pasting it as many times as necessary. In Step 6, we put the title, enter Individual Questions in
cell A10 and the number 1 in cell A11. We are about to grade question number 1 and put the
results in cell B10.

In cell B11, enter, =IF(Questions!C3=Score!Z3,"Correct","Try again")

This is an Excel function of the form,

IF(logical_test,value_if_true,value_if_false)

Translated in to English, it tells the computer to compare the contents of cell C3 of the Questions
worksheet with cell Z3 of the Score Worksheet. If the two cells are identical, cell B11 will display
the word Correct. If the two cells are not identical, cell B11 will display the phrase Try again.

This function is not case-specific, so mixing upper and lower case letters will not cause incorrect
results.

When you are working with multiple questions and cutting and pasting this formula to multiple
cells, you may need to correct the formula row and sheet references (C# & Z#) so they refer to
the appropriate answer cells and answer key cells for each question.

Step 7: Enter formula to calculate overall score in B5 of Score.

Sooner or later, you will want to use more than one question. When that day comes, the students
taking the quiz will want to know how many questions were right. Since we only have one formula
right now, we can start with the following function,

In cell B5, enter, =COUNTIF(B11:B11,"Correct")

This cell contains an Excel function of the form,

COUNTIF(range,criteria)

The COUNTIF function counts the number of cells within a range that meet a given condition. The
range is defined by the B11:B11 term and the condition is whether the cell is displaying the word
Correct. Remember, the formula in cell B11 compares the student’s answer to the answer key
cell (cell Z3 of Score) and is displays Correct if the answers match.

In other words, this formula simply counts the number of individual answers marked Correct.

Later, when you want to use more than one question, this formula will need two minor changes.
 1) Modify the range so that it includes all of the answer cells. For example, if your answer
cells are spread out from B11 down to B53, edit the formula to include the term B11:B53
instead of B11:B11.
2) If you want to provide an overall percentage score; add the term /10 to the end of the
function, if, for example, if you have 10 questions, then format the cell to percentage
format. The number you add after the division symbol is the number of questions you
want the raw score to be divided by. With this addition, the formula will count the number
of correct answers and divides by 10

Step 8: Hide the correct answers and protect the Score worksheet.
We like to hide the answer key cells, just to make the students work for the correct answer. Still
on the Score worksheet,
1) Right-click at the top of column Z to highlight the column
2) Go to the toolbar at the top of the screen and click on Format/Column/Hide
3) Column Z should now disappear.

Even though column Z is hidden, anyone can notice that the columns are now labeled X, Y, AA,
and realize something is wrong. To keep column Z hidden, you need to protect the Score
worksheet.

In the toolbar at the top of the screen, select Tools/Protection/Protect/Sheet. Create a password
and re-enter it when prompted to confirm it. Make sure to write this password down because
there is no simple way to unprotect this worksheet if you forget the password.

Conclusion
This interactive quiz is now ready to save and distribute to students. Just tell them to go to the
Questions worksheet and enter the letter of the correct answer in the marked answer cell in
column C, then they can go back to the Score worksheet to check their grades.

The key to the interactive feature is using the IF function to compare cells on different
worksheets. Now that you know how to apply this to multiple choice questions, you can adapt the
technique to use true/false and matching questions, or perhaps you’ll create something we
haven’t even thought of yet.