On August 17, 2026, the Society of Actuaries updated "The Prometric Center Experience for SOA Written-Answer Exams" to state that Prometric computers now have the 2024 versions of Word and Excel. The previous version of that guide, dated December 19, 2023, listed the 2016 versions. If you are sitting ALTAM, ASTAM, or an FSA-track written-answer exam, you now have eight years of Excel releases available at the testing center, including XLOOKUP, LET, dynamic arrays, and IFS.
You can find the guide on the SOA's Exam Day Information page under Written-Answer Exams. It is a short PDF, and it is the authority on what the testing environment actually contains, so read the current version before your sitting rather than relying on a forum thread or this post.
What is newly available
Excel 2016 predates almost every modern Excel function. Moving to the 2024 release brings the testing center up to date with the functions most working actuaries have had for years:
| Now available | What it replaces |
|---|---|
| XLOOKUP | VLOOKUP column counting, INDEX/MATCH pairs |
| LET | Repeating the same subexpression three times inside one formula |
| SORT, SORTBY, FILTER, UNIQUE | Helper columns of LARGE/SMALL calls and manual re-sorting |
| SEQUENCE | Dragging a fill handle to build projection years or payment periods |
| Dynamic array spill | Copying one formula across a grid cell by cell |
| IFS, SWITCH | Deeply nested IF chains |
| TEXTJOIN, CONCAT, MAXIFS, MINIFS | Clumsier 2016-era workarounds (these arrived in Excel 2019) |
| LAMBDA, MAP, SCAN, BYROW | Nothing directly; these are new territory |
| XMATCH, TAKE, DROP, VSTACK, HSTACK | Various positional and array-assembly workarounds |
A few of these matter more than others for actuarial work. XLOOKUP removes the classic exam-day error of miscounting a VLOOKUP column index under time pressure. LET lets you name a discount factor or a survival probability once and reference it by name instead of repeating the expression. SORT and FILTER turn tail-value extraction, the kind of thing CTE and TVaR questions ask for, into a single formula. SEQUENCE generates projection years without dragging. I cover each of these with worked actuarial examples in the companion post on which Excel 2024 functions are worth knowing.
Word 2024 replaces Word 2016 as well, but for exam purposes the difference is cosmetic. Nothing about how you type, format, and submit a written response changes in any meaningful way.
What is still not available
The restrictions carry over from the prior guide:
- Solver is not available. If a question needs you to solve for a premium, an interest rate, or a reserve basis, that still means Goal Seek or algebra.
- The Analysis ToolPak is not available. No regression tool, no data-analysis add-in. The exams have never required it.
- No Help in Word or Excel. You need to know your function syntax cold, because F1 is disabled and there is no documentation in the room.
- A 25MB file size limit per file, which no sane exam workbook will ever approach.
- The Windows snipping tool and a long list of shortcut keys are disabled, including CTRL-N, CTRL-P, ALT-TAB, F1, F3, F11, and the Windows keys. Ordinary editing shortcuts like copy, paste, and undo work normally.
Two things people sometimes assume are banned remain available: Goal Seek and pivot tables. Both were available under the old guide and both still are.
What has not changed
The update is a software refresh, not a format change. Everything else in the guide reads the same:
- The exam questions and any case studies, formula sheets, and tables still arrive as PDF files with a working search function.
- You still get roughly 10 minutes of instructional tutorial before the clock starts, and a 5-minute window after time expires to upload your files.
- The clock cannot be paused, and breaks run on exam time.
- You can still copy and paste between Word and Excel, including pasting Excel cells into Word as a table.
- ALTAM and ASTAM keep their special arrangement: some questions are answered in a paper answer booklet and some directly in the Excel workbook. For ALTAM the tables come as an Excel workbook; for ASTAM no tables are provided and you are expected to use Excel to compute probabilities and quantiles from common distributions.
One line in the current guide deserves bold text if you sit ALTAM or ASTAM: do not upload your Excel file until all of your answer-booklet work is complete. Uploading the workbook ends your access to the on-screen questions. Treat the upload as the last action of your exam.
Does this change how you should study?
Mostly, no. The SOA writes these exams to be solvable with the tools every candidate has, and the released questions confirm it: INDEX/MATCH, VLOOKUP, SUMPRODUCT, NPV, nested IFs, and Goal Seek handle everything. Nobody fails ALTAM for not knowing XLOOKUP.
The realistic upside is for candidates who already use modern Excel at work. Until now you had to downgrade your habits for exam day, remembering which of your everyday functions would silently not exist on the Prometric machine. That tax is gone. If XLOOKUP and LET are how you naturally work, you can now work that way in the exam.
One caution in the other direction: if you practice at home on Microsoft 365, note that a few of its newest functions (GROUPBY, PIVOTBY, the REGEX functions, Python in Excel) are subscription features that are not part of the perpetual Excel 2024 release, and the exam machines have no internet connectivity in any case. If a function is load-bearing in your workflow, confirm it exists in Excel 2024 before you build exam habits around it.
If you want to drill the written-answer format itself, FreeFellow has free ALTAM practice questions and ASTAM practice questions, including written-answer drills with model solutions.
The bottom line
The SOA quietly gave written-answer candidates a modern spreadsheet. Nothing is required of you, Solver is still off the table, and the exam is the same exam. But if the last eight years of Excel are part of how you think, the testing center finally keeps up.