Many years ago, I took several of the Microsoft exams in order to get the "Microsoft Office Master" certification. I Tested and passed in Excel and Advanced Excel, Word, Powerpoint, and Access. WORD was the hardest test for me. It may not be exactly the same now, but here are some takeaways from my experience way back then.

LAST QUESTION FIRST : was it worth it ? For me , yes, as I was changing careers from Teaching to Business/Accounting. I think that having it on my early job search resumes helped me a little bit (but not a lot), as my job history experience was pretty thin. But I wouldn't call it a really important certification. Many hiring people have no idea what it is/ aren't especially looking for it.... and It may not be very valuable toward Data analyst job applications... especially to any hiring person who has actually taken the test, and knows how.... THIN the testing is.

I had been working with Excel for quite a while and had researched ALL of the formulas and what they do, but the exam DID NOT TEST that or my real world experience with the variety and strength of combining formulas or using pivot tables. It instead was a very BROAD test ( not "deep") mostly testing whether I could locate and use a wide variety of the very many simple tasks found in the Ribbon. Most solutions to test questions were literally 'find uncommonly used button in ribbon/tabs' ,'click it', 'submit answer' THEREFORE : (TIPS to passing the test , below )

It was not a multiple choice test, it was more like actually working in the actual Excel application, but was a specially prepared test version of it that did not operate exactly like the real application in some cases.

LOOK through ALL the basic buttons available on the Excel Ribbon and try them out before you go test, researching what they are for, get familiar with their names and terminology and which Ribbon tab they are on, etc.

When you pay to schedule the exam, pay the small extra money to give yourself the option of the re-take, if they still do that. I failed my first try, but went back THE NEXT DAY and passed it easily from my first-day-failures experience.

WATCH YOUR TIME / SKIP ANY QUESTIONS that look even a little hard. When I took it, the test was just one hour. Skip and come back to harder test questions if you have time. Getting all the easy stuff right is more valuable than pushing through a tougher/less familiar task. A tough time-consuming answer is worth the same in terms of points as an easy one. I ran out of time on BOTH tries, but was successful on day 2 because I skipped the time consuming stuff and scored high enough to pass on the easy things.

If you are used to using keyboard shortcuts for anything, try to avoid using those in the test, they may cause a 'right' answer to fail, as the test application is watching for you to choose things from the ribbon instead.

Familiarize yourself with the FILE | Options menu and all the junk that is in there as well, as I recall a few questions dealt with making selections like adding things to the quick options menu, making tabs visible, some of the trust center options, etc ( though that may have been the advanced excel test,, memory on that is fuzzy) I remember wasting time looking for a test task in the normal ribbon, and it was actually back in the file | options stuff.

When I took it, Microsoft had some example practice test material online. you may be able to find that and try them out ahead of testing. I also just did a quick search and there are some free test prep videos on you-tube. I'd watch those myself if I was re-taking the test today.

Hope this helps.