IT Fundamentals and MS Office Shortcuts MCQs with Explanations

A byte is a group of 8 bits and is the smallest unit used to store one character of text, while a kilobyte is 1024 bytes. The figures 16 and 32 describe the word length of a processor, not the size of a byte.

Memory is counted in powers of two, so 1 MB equals 2 to the power 20 bytes, which is 1024 KB, and 1 KB equals 2 to the power 10, or 1024, bytes. Storage makers advertise 1 KB as 1000 bytes, which is why a newly formatted drive always reports less space than its label.

Thirteen is 8 plus 4 plus 1, so the place values 8, 4, 2 and 1 are filled by 1, 1, 0 and 1, giving 1101. The other options are 14 (1110), 11 (1011) and 7 (0111).

Hexadecimal has base 16 and writes its digits as 0 to 9 followed by A, B, C, D, E and F for the values 10 to 15, so F is 15 and the number after it is 10 in hex, that is 16 in decimal. The system is used for colour codes and memory addresses because one hex digit covers exactly four binary bits.

RAM is volatile main memory: it holds the program and data in use at the moment and is emptied when power is removed, which is why work must be saved before shutdown. ROM, hard disks and flash drives are non-volatile and keep their contents without power.

Ctrl+Z steps back through the edit history and reverses the most recent change, while Ctrl+Y performs the opposite action and redoes it. Copying is Ctrl+C, cutting is Ctrl+X and selecting the whole document is Ctrl+A.

The ALU carries out addition, subtraction, comparisons and Boolean logic. The control unit computes nothing at all: it fetches instructions and directs the other parts, while registers and cache only hold data temporarily.

COUNT ignores blank cells and text and tallies only the cells holding numeric values. SUM adds the values, MAX returns the largest of them, and COUNTA is the function that counts every non-empty cell.

Linux is a family of Unix-like operating systems that manage the hardware, memory, files and processes of a computer and provide the platform on which programs run. Excel, Word and a PDF reader are application software that can only run on top of an operating system.

F5 runs the presentation as a slide show from the beginning, whereas Shift+F5 starts it from the slide currently on screen. The Save As dialog is opened with F12, the spelling check with F7 and a new slide with Ctrl+M.

A plotter is an output device that draws vector artwork such as engineering drawings on large rolls or sheets of paper. The scanner, keyboard and mouse all send data into the computer, as do OMR boards and barcode readers.

VLOOKUP, meaning vertical lookup, scans the leftmost column of a range and returns the entry from a column number you specify in that same row. SUMIF adds and COUNTIF tallies only the cells that satisfy a condition, while IF returns one of two results from a logical test.

F12 opens Save As, so the file can be stored under a new name or in another format. F1 opens Help, Ctrl+F opens Find and Ctrl+P opens the print dialog, while Ctrl+S saves the file under its existing name.

The.pptx extension marks a PowerPoint presentation in the XML-based format,.docx is a Word document and.xlsx an Excel workbook, while.pdf is the layout-preserving Portable Document Format introduced by Adobe. The earlier binary formats were saved as.ppt,.doc and.xls.

Arithmetic logic unit, Control unit

Supercomputers are focused to execute few programs as fast as possible while mainframe uses its power to execute as many programs concurrently