Lab 4 Walkthrough — FSA Excel Skills

This lab makes the Excel formula toolkit automatic. You work a short drill of each concept on a small, clean dataset of 14 firms. The cells you fill in are highlighted amber. There are no formula hints; you bring the formula. That is the whole loop.

1. Get the workbook

Everything happens in one file. Download it, save it, and open it in Excel:

Download lab_04_template.xlsx

2. Read the reference tabs first

Three tabs up front teach you everything you need. Keep them open while you work:

0-Formula Reference — every function the lab uses, worked live, with a small lookup dataset.

0-Logic Lab — change a TRUE/FALSE and watch AND, OR, and IF react.

0-Errors — what each Excel error means and how to handle it.

3. Work the numbered tabs, in order

Tabs 1 through 9 build from simple to applied. Each row tells you what to compute; you write the formula. They cover, in order:

data types and text cleanup,
the logic functions — IF, IFS, AND, OR,
conditional aggregation — SUMIFS and friends,
lookups — VLOOKUP, XLOOKUP,
error handling,
the structural skills — make a Table, name a range, and use structured references,
and finally Bring it All Together, which chains the concepts on one firm with no hints.

The one rule: every cell you need to fill in is highlighted amber. In each amber cell, type the formula (it starts with =) — do not paste a value or type the answer in by hand.

How many formulas to expect

The total cell count looks large, but most of it is the same formula repeated down a column. You write one good formula per task and fill it down — so the actual thinking is a handful of formulas per sheet, not hundreds. Here is the per-sheet breakdown so nothing catches you by surprise:

Sheet	Formula cells	What that really means
1-Types	5	One per data-type task.
2-Cleanup	5	One per text-cleanup task.
3-Logic	42	A few distinct formulas, filled down the column.
4-Aggregate	25	`SUMIFS` and friends, repeated across the grid.
5-Lookup	252	The lookup grids are filled by writing one formula and dragging it across and down — far less typing than the count suggests.
6-Errors	64	One error-handling pattern, filled across the cases.
7-Tables	14	Structured references on the firm Table.
8-Ranges	0	No formula — this tab is a single convert-Table-to-Range action.
9-Bring it All Together	20	The concepts chained on one firm, no hints.
Total	~427	Almost all fill-down — a handful of real formulas per sheet.

4. Stuck on a formula?

Open the FSA Formula Drill. It is the same set of concepts with an AI tutor that helps you reason it out without handing over the answer. The How to Read an Excel Formula trainer is a good warm-up if the syntax feels shaky.

5. Turn it in

When every amber cell holds a formula, save the file as lab_04.xlsx and upload it to the Lab 4 assignment in Canvas. You may resubmit; the latest attempt is kept.