The Microsoft Exam Sandbox is a short demo Microsoft exam that provides you with the opportunity to experience the look and feel of the exam before you take it.
The Microsoft Exam Demo gives you 10 questions and 480 minutes to complete them. The questions are formatted in the same manner as the real exam, which could be; multiple-choice, drag and drop, list building or scenario-based. The questions are not real and are only designed to mimic to look and feel of the real exam.
The Microsoft Exam Sandbox is a great way for someone who has not taken the exam before to prepare themselves for the style of questions and experience they may have when they take the real exam.
It is important that you use the sandbox to familiarise yourself the the layout of the exam, how to navigate between the pages and understand the information available to you during the exam.
You can access the Microsoft Exam Sandbox at the following link: https://aka.ms/examdemo
Do you want to take your Microsoft Exam for free? We have a post to show you how you can. How to get Free Microsoft Exam Certifications
Starting the exam
When you have opened the exam, importantly, you should know the next button is located at the bottom left of your screen. When you are ready to start the exam the next button will take you to the next screen.
Once you are on the next screen, you will be presented with a page containing the following text:
Welcome to the sandbox exam!
The sandbox or demo exam is designed to help you become familiar with the exam interface and different types of questions used in the Microsoft Certification exams.
This demo contains the most common components and functions of the exam experience. Microsoft regularly adds and modifies question types to improve usability and accessibility.
The commenting feature is enabled by default in this exam. Please feed free to provide us with feedback about the functionality and usability of our exams.
Inside the Microsoft Exam Sandbox Demo
Regarding the actual questions, once you are inside the demo exam you will be able to experience every type of exam question you are likely to find in a real Microsoft exam. These include:
- Multiple choice – Choosing a single answer from multiple different options
- Multiple selections – Choosing multiple answers from a list of possible options
- Drag and drop – moving answers from one side to pair with options on the other side.
- List order creation – Selecting multiple actions from a menu and ordering them to create a solution to answer the question
- Interactive window selection – Selecting an option on an interactive example application window
- Drop down selection – Selecting options from dropdown windows to complete the answer to a solution, for example, this could be a statement or PowerShell argument
- Case study – You will be presented with a scenario and your question may be multiple-choice and based on the scenario you are provided
What do the real Microsoft Exam Questions look like?
Above you have an example Microsoft Exam question that is taken from the Microsoft Exam Sandbox. This is not a real question by the layout is identical to that of a real exam question. The purpose of the above is to help you identify the different features available during the exam.
Highlighted in Green, you have the question number you are currently on, including the total number of questions. You also have 2 options, Review later allows you to come back to this question at the end of the exam, you may find a later question in the exam helps you answer this one. The Leave Feedback option allows you to leave any feedback at the end of the exam in case there are any inaccuracies with the question that may impact your score, you can make them known.
Highlighted in Blue is the question area, this area may or may not be interactive. Occasionally there will be multiple tabs in which the information on them tabs represent the whole question.
Highlighted in Red is the answer area. Any answers you are required to provide will be located here. The answers will be in any of the formats I have mentioned earlier in this post.
Highlighted in Brown you have 4 options. Starting from the left is the help option, when you click this a new window opens providing you instructions on the active screen, how you can leave comments and any controls and shortcuts available. Next is a calculator you can use to assist with answering any question. After that is an option to change the colour scheme should you have any sensitivity to the default colour scheme. And lastly is the reset option which will reset any changes you have made on the current screen to default.
Highlighted in Purple are the navigation buttons to move to the next exam question or go back to the previous. It is important to know some questions will not allow you to go back and revisit. This will be clearly stated in the blue section highlighted above.
