ICDL Spreadsheets (ICDL) case studies
ICDL Spreadsheets · Put your knowledge to work in context.
ICDL Spreadsheets is a practical, task-based certification in spreadsheet software, offered within the ICDL (International Certification of Digital Literacy) programme family. ICDL Foundation describes itself as "a global social enterprise committed to raising standards of digital competence in the workforce, education and society," and states that ICDL certification is available "in more than 100 countries, across our network of more than 20,000 testing centres." The qualification is aimed at students, job-seekers and employees who need to show they can build and use a spreadsheet competently rather than merely recognise its menus - recording data, writing formulas, formatting for readability, charting results and producing clean printed or exported output. The ICDL Spreadsheets case studies are 5 cases and about 3,588 words.
1Recovering the right price list and sharing it safely
Your team maintains a supplier price list in Prices.xlsx stored on OneDrive. Sheet Products has 1,240 rows: column A holds product codes such as 00417 and 01250, column B descriptions and column C unit cost.
732 words, about 4 min2Leading zeros, lookups and a total that misses a row
You are building a staff overtime sheet. In A2 you type employee ID 0012 and Excel displays 12.
681 words, about 3 min3A 3D total that changed after sheet edits
Workbook Budget2025.xlsx has sheets named Jan through Dec in that order, all with the same layout: column A product, B budget, C actual. The Summary sheet has =SUM(Jan:Dec!C2) in B2, filled down for 40 products.
736 words, about 4 min4A SUMIFS that is too high and a margin column full of errors
A sales workbook holds 5,000 rows in A2:E5001: A order date, B region, C rep, D revenue, E cost. The dates were pasted from a web page, so some are left-aligned text such as 31/03/2025 while others are real dates.
659 words, about 3 min5A chart that hides outliers and exaggerates a dip
Sheet Monthly has A1:C13: month names Jan to Dec in column A, actual sales in column B, and forecast sales in column C. November actual is blank because the month has not closed, while the forecast exists for all twelve months.
780 words, about 4 min