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YOUR LEARNING PATH

The Cellcraft curriculum

96 original formula quests across 12 regions. Start with cell references, then practice summaries, business rules, lookups, text cleanup, and reporting. The beta curriculum is free.

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The Starting Village

Formula foundations · Beginner. Your first formulas, cell references, and everyday calculations.

  1. Your first formula — Cell references
  2. A little addition — Addition
  3. Find the profit — Subtraction
  4. Restock the shelf — Multiplication
  5. Price per unit — Division
  6. The margin scroll — Order of operations
  7. The tax enchantment — Percentages
  8. Anchor the reference — Absolute references

The Counting Woods

Totals & summaries · Beginner. Turn a sheet of numbers into answers with core functions.

  1. Gather the gold — SUM
  2. An average day — AVERAGE
  3. The largest haul — MAX
  4. The smallest haul — MIN
  5. Count the cargo — COUNT
  6. Count the orders — COUNTA
  7. A tidy average — Nested functions
  8. Total guild profit — Combining functions

The Logic Keep

Decisions & error handling · Intermediate. Build business rules with IF, AND, OR, and IFERROR.

  1. The restock rule — IF
  2. Hit the target — Comparison operators
  3. Two gates — AND
  4. Either door — OR
  5. The opposite spell — NOT
  6. Guard against zero — IFERROR
  7. Overtime decision — Calculated IF results
  8. The priority order — IF + AND

The Crystal Mines

Conditional analysis · Intermediate. Find the right totals with SUMIF, COUNTIFS, and more.

  1. Northern treasure — SUMIF
  2. Count the north — COUNTIF
  3. High-value orders — Numeric criteria
  4. Two crystal seals — SUMIFS
  5. Count the monitors — COUNTIFS
  6. Northern average — AVERAGEIF
  7. The wildcard rune — Wildcards
  8. Average the big orders — AVERAGEIFS

The Lookup Library

Lookups & references · Intermediate. Connect information using XLOOKUP, VLOOKUP, and INDEX/MATCH.

  1. Summon a price — XLOOKUP
  2. The missing relic — XLOOKUP fallback
  3. The old library — VLOOKUP
  4. Find its place — MATCH
  5. Open the right page — INDEX
  6. An ancient combination — INDEX + MATCH
  7. Look to the left — Left lookups
  8. Find a teammate — Applied lookups

The Alchemist’s Lab

Text & data cleanup · Intermediate. Transform messy names, codes, and imported data.

  1. Sweep the dust — TRIM
  2. A proper introduction — PROPER + TRIM
  3. Lower the signal — LOWER
  4. The first three runes — LEFT
  5. The last three runes — RIGHT
  6. Read the city code — MID
  7. Repair the separator — SUBSTITUTE
  8. Join the party — Text concatenation

The Summit Observatory

Reporting & analysis · Advanced. Calculate weighted results, rankings, and useful report metrics.

  1. The weighted purse — SUMPRODUCT
  2. The silver medal — LARGE
  3. The second-smallest gem — SMALL
  4. A gap in the roster — COUNTBLANK
  5. The budget variance — Budget variance
  6. The conversion lens — Weighted conversion
  7. The acquisition cost — Cost per acquisition
  8. Mind the shortfall — ABS

The Dragon’s Ledger

Workplace boss challenges · Boss raid. Combine your skills to solve realistic business problems.

  1. The merchant’s audit — Merchant audit
  2. Rescue the payroll — Payroll project
  3. The northern contract — Segment profitability
  4. The emergency purchase — Lookup + business rule
  5. The campaign debrief — Marketing project
  6. The budget alarm — Budget project
  7. The contact restoration — Cleanup project
  8. The final ledger — Final boss

The Clockwork Harbor

Dates & working days · Intermediate. Build real Excel dates, schedule renewals, and count working days.

  1. Assemble a departure date — DATE
  2. Read the year seal — YEAR
  3. The month manifest — MONTH
  4. The departure day — DAY
  5. Measure the crossing — DAYS
  6. Renew the charter — EDATE
  7. Close the month’s books — EOMONTH
  8. The working-day voyage — NETWORKDAYS

The Oracle’s Tower

Statistics & decision rules · Intermediate. Read distributions, round to useful units, and write clearer business rules.

  1. The middle prophecy — MEDIAN
  2. The recurring rune — MODE.SNGL
  3. Pack in sets of five — FLOOR
  4. Reserve the next ten — CEILING
  5. Three paths of readiness — IFS
  6. Translate the tier — SWITCH
  7. Choose one route — XOR
  8. The dispatch rule — Combined logical rules

The Scribe’s Archive

Text search & extraction · Intermediate. Find variable separators and extract information from imported records.

  1. Find the messenger’s mark — FIND
  2. Locate the northern name — SEARCH
  3. The second gateway — Search from a position
  4. Extract the messenger — Variable-width extraction
  5. Extract the destination — MID + FIND + LEN
  6. Read a patterned note — SEARCH wildcards
  7. Handle an absent mark — Search error handling
  8. Recover the ticket number — Nested text extraction

The Shifting Isles

Dynamic arrays · Advanced. Build live lists with UNIQUE, FILTER, SORT, and array comparisons.

  1. Gather the regions — UNIQUE
  2. Rank the shipment sizes — SORT
  3. The northern manifest — FILTER rows
  4. Two seals for entry — FILTER with AND
  5. Sort the northern ledger — SORT + FILTER
  6. A region appearing once — UNIQUE exactly once
  7. Hide the cost column — FILTER columns
  8. The ordered item catalog — Sorted distinct list

Practice beyond one formula

The project tracks group quests around fictional workplace scenarios. The pivot arena teaches grouping and aggregation. Keyboard drills, review practice, and downloadable .xlsx workbooks give you other ways to revisit the material. The separate workbook lab provides guided practice inside Cellcraft; it does not execute the Excel application.

Supported formula functions

The engine currently implements 71 English-named functions:

SUM · AVERAGE · MIN · MAX · COUNT · COUNTA · ABS · ROUND · ROUNDUP · ROUNDDOWN · INT · MOD · SUMPRODUCT · IF · IFERROR · AND · OR · NOT · SUMIF · COUNTIF · AVERAGEIF · SUMIFS · COUNTIFS · AVERAGEIFS · XLOOKUP · VLOOKUP · INDEX · MATCH · LEFT · RIGHT · MID · LEN · TRIM · UPPER · LOWER · PROPER · CONCAT · CONCATENATE · TEXTJOIN · SUBSTITUTE · VALUE · ISNUMBER · ISTEXT · ISBLANK · ROWS · COLUMNS · COUNTBLANK · LARGE · SMALL · DATE · YEAR · MONTH · DAY · TODAY · EDATE · EOMONTH · DAYS · WEEKDAY · NETWORKDAYS · MEDIAN · MODE.SNGL · FLOOR · CEILING · IFS · SWITCH · XOR · FIND · SEARCH · UNIQUE · FILTER · SORT

Support is intentionally bounded. Function names and formulas follow the supported subset documented in the spellbook; the presence of a function does not mean every Microsoft Excel option or edge case is implemented. Use finite ranges rather than full columns. Text, date, and array behavior has the limits described in the relevant lesson.

Dates and dynamic arrays

Date lessons use numeric serial dates in the Excel 1900 date system, including its historical serial-60 behavior. The lab does not parse locale-specific date text or support the 1904 date system. Date results may display as a serial number. TODAY depends on the current environment date.

UNIQUE, FILTER, and SORT can produce a two-dimensional answer preview in the practice engine. This preview does not place spilled values into worksheet cells. There are no spill references, array literals, spill-collision checks, or table/structured references. XLOOKUP returns one scalar value rather than a multi-column spill. Array IF evaluates branches eagerly, so its error behavior can differ from a scalar IF.

Compatibility and limits

Cellcraft is an independent teaching environment. It does not execute VBA, Power Query, external links, or native Excel PivotTable objects. Shortcut behavior varies by operating system and Excel version. Downloads are ordinary .xlsx files; functions such as XLOOKUP require a compatible Excel version. Verify important calculations in your own spreadsheet app.

The quest checker recalculates answers on changed numeric inputs to catch many hardcoded answers and incomplete ranges. It cannot prove that a formula works for every future input. Course completion is a record of training, rather than a guarantee of professional proficiency or a job outcome.

See completion requirements →