Haskayne School of Business: MGIS 459

Fall 2015

Excel Skills Assignment

Weight: 10% (50 marks)
Due Date: Sept 11, 2015 at Midnight
This assignment is designed to give your instructor an idea of where each student stands with their Excel
skills so that the course content can be adjust to address areas of weakness. There are very specific
expectations for each question. In all cases you are to use and / or describe the most effective and
efficient model in your solution. The only assistance you will get form the instructor are hints as to the
functions to use and each hint will cost you 5 marks out of the 50 marks awarded to the assignment.
N.B. Remember there are very specific techniques to be used and solutions for each of the questions.
1. Mortgage Payment Schedule Model (10 marks)
Create a spreadsheet model in which you a person can calculate mortgage payments based on different
principles, interest rates, and terms for both American and Canadian mortgages. Assume monthly
payments are being made at the end of the month. Include in your model an amortization schedule for
the payments on principle and the payments on interest.
HINTS:
a. American mortgage rates are annually compounded (r/12) and Canadian mortgage rates are
semi-annually compound ((1+r)/2)^(1/6)-1.
b. You can use the PMT family of functions in Excel to accomplish this task.
2. Filling in Data (5 marks each)
a. Create a row in your spreadsheet with month names for a two year financial statement
and then describe how you did this in a text box under the row of months.
b. Finish this series of numbers (7, 15) up to 100th number in the series. Again describe
how you did this but this time use a comment tag instead of a text box and make sure
you include in your comment what the 100th number of the series is. (There are marks
for having the right answer)
3. Converting Row Data to Column Data (5 marks)
After placing the data listed below into a column in your spreadsheet convert it to row data starting in
the next column over. Describe the process you used to do this including how you inputted the row data
in a text box under your row of data. Add some flair by adding some unique formatting to your text box.
2

10

12

14

12

10

4. Assigning Letter Grades (10 marks)

Raw Grades

Cut-off

Grade

82.0

92.5

93.2

0.0

81.6

66.7

86.6

45.0

87.9

85.0

74.0

50.0

D+

87.9

88.7

91.3

60.0

C-

82.1

86.6

87.6

65.0

84.1

86.5

68.8

70.0

C+

Management Information Systems

Bachelor of Commerce

Haskayne School of Business: MGIS 459

Fall 2015
93.1

93.7

85.3

75.0

B-

92.6

81.4

90.0

80.0

77.3

81.5

83.1

85.0

B+

90.1

81.0

77.5

90.0

A-

78.0

84.9

84.8

95.0

89.5

91.8

84.2

99.0

A+

84.9

88.1

86.3

69.0

85.2

75.9

83.1

91.5

78.7

85.5

84.6

88.8

79.3

85.1

86.4

Using the raw data list above create a spreadsheet that assigns a final letter grades to each row of data
based on the percentages given and then count the number of each letter grades assigned. Finally sort
the list by final letter grade in descending order. The first assignment is worth 30%, the second is worth
30%, and the third is worth 40% percent of the final grade.
5. Solver (10 marks)
Use Solver to solve the following situation. You need to find the optimum solution for the following
problem. Using real Canadian coin values from 5 cents to .25 cents find a solution that gives you $6.85
with the least amount of coins while using all of your 15 quarters you have in your pocket.
6. Marcos (5 marks)
Type your first name into each of the cell into each cell in the range of A1:G6. Describe how you did this
using a comment tag. Now create two macros, the first will be called Format and a second will be called
Unformat. The first macro needs to format the range of cells (B2:F5) so that they have a yellow
background, navy 16 point font, and a thick border around the outside of the range of formatted cells.
The second macro will result in the range returning to its default format in Excel. Assign each macro to
its own Form Control Button.

Management Information Systems

Bachelor of Commerce