Abstract: Excel automated grading systems for problem-solving questions often rely on RTF and VBA approaches, but their effectiveness is far from satisfactory. To address this issue, a method based on the Office Open XML format and Python language, utilizing open-source libraries such as Openpyxl, Element Tree, along with custom classes for Excel file parsing, has been proposed. This method presents a summary of common tags and their functions in the Spread sheet ML markup language of the Office Open XML format. Furthermore, an automated grading workflow is designed, which is divided into three stages: format parsing, format saving, and format comparison for quantitative scoring. The format parsing stage is further broken down into two steps-Openpyx l parsing and Element Tree parsing-that can effectively address custom error handling during parsing. Testing demonstrated that this method enables reliable automated grading of Excel 2010 problem-solving questions.

Key words: Office Open XML, Excel manipulation question: automatic grading