Clean a room label
Remove the extra spaces from the room typed in B2 so it reads like a normal label.
Formula: =TRIM(B2) → Room B
Hands-on Excel exercises
Excel Skills for Administrative Assistants
Practice Excel for administrative work: attendee lists with TEXTJOIN, cleaning room names with TRIM, and business-day counts with NETWORKDAYS.
Administrative assistants use spreadsheets for lists that other people depend on: meeting attendees, room bookings, travel dates, supply orders. Hiring tests for the role look for tidy habits and a handful of practical formulas. Can you combine a column of names into one line for an invite? Can you tidy up text pasted from an email? Can you count the working days between two dates?
The live sheet is a meeting roster with one blank row, a typical gap in a real list. Your task is to build a comma-separated attendee line with TEXTJOIN, ignoring the blank. The worked answers then clean a room label with extra spaces using TRIM, count how many attendees are actually listed, and count the business days in a two-week window with NETWORKDAYS.
The principle is to keep one record per row and let formulas do the repetition. If you can re-run a step instead of retyping it, the list stays correct when one name changes. Check your output by eye, because text formulas fail quietly: a stray space or a missing comma still looks plausible. Use fictional names when you practice, and keep real contact details out of shared examples. When the sheet needs a status summary, the project managers page extends these ideas.
Your turn
Your turn: in F2, join the attendee names in A2:A6 into one text separated by a comma and a space, skipping the blank cell.
| A | B | C | D | E | F | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Attendee | Room (as typed) | Window start | Window end | ||
| 2 | Ana Diaz | Room B | 6/3/2024 | 6/14/2024 | ||
| 3 | Raj Patel | |||||
| 4 | ||||||
| 5 | Li Wei | |||||
| 6 | Tom Reid |
Not yet solved.
Answer: =TEXTJOIN(", ",TRUE,A2:A6)
Practice under a time limit
Try the free Sample mock exam with 4 tasks in 8 minutes, or browse the level and interview mock exams included with Pro + Exams.
Related exercises
Open a task in its lesson.
- Edit A3 without erasing it: add "New " at the beginning so it reads "New Orleans".
- In D7, calculate the total amount of the purchase.
- In E2:E5, show the month number the order was placed, and in F2:F5 the year.
- Make a dropdown list of statuses in C2:C7, using F2:F4 as the source.
- In F2:F4, look up the item name for each code in column E.
- Turn on the filter and keep only the Chicago deals visible.
- Build a column chart of revenue by month (A1:B7).
Worked answers
Try the spreadsheet first, then compare your formula and result.
Count the attendees listed
How many non-blank attendee names are in A2:A6?
Formula: =COUNTA(A2:A6) → 4
Count business days
How many working days are there between the window start in D2 and the window end in E2, both included, with no holidays?
Formula: =NETWORKDAYS(D2,E2) → 10
Frequently asked questions
Why does TEXTJOIN take TRUE?
The second argument tells it to ignore empty cells, so a blank row does not produce a double comma.
Does TRIM change the original cell?
No. It returns a cleaned copy. Keep the original and use the cleaned version in a helper column.
How do I include holidays in NETWORKDAYS?
Add a range of holiday dates as the third argument. This example omits them for simplicity.
What keeps a list easy for colleagues to use?
One record per row, a clear header, consistent formats, and data validation where choices are limited.