Texas Electrician ExamTexas journeyman & master

Checked against primary sources 2026-08-24

The checks that decide whether you get seated

Nothing on this list is about electricity. All of it happens at a desk in the lobby, before you have answered a single item, and all of it can be settled tonight.

On this page
  1. The screen you can fail without answering anything
  2. The binding is about the object, not the content
  3. The Handbook is a different product with a similar cover
  4. Who applied your tabs matters more than where they point
  5. You may write in it, but only before you arrive
  6. Anything loose is not part of the book
  7. The calculator, the identification and the clock
  8. The one check that moves this week
  9. What this page cites

The screen you can fail without answering anything

Pick the book up and look at the spine first. That is what the person at the desk looks at, and it decides more days than any single article in the code does.

PSI publishes every one of these rules in the candidate information bulletin for the TDLR electrical examinations, the version in circulation carrying the date 9 July 2026. It is free, it runs to twenty-three pages, and almost nobody reads it before the morning they travel.

What follows is that document turned into a physical inspection. Do it with the book in your hands rather than from memory, because every item below is a property of the object, and objects are easy to be wrong about.

The binding is about the object, not the content

A soft-bound copy goes in. Loose-leaf, spiralbound and ring-bound copies do not, whatever is printed inside them.

That catches an entirely current code in the wrong jacket. A copy rebound at a print shop so it lies flat on a small desk is the same refusal as a decade-old one. So is a book that arrived soft-bound and later had its spine trimmed off.

Run a thumb down the back edge. If you can see a coil, a comb, three rings or a stack of separate sheets, the book is not going in with you and you have a day to solve it.

The Handbook is a different product with a similar cover

Open to any page in the middle. If the code text is interrupted by explanatory paragraphs set in a different color, by photographs, or by worked examples, you are holding the Handbook, and the Handbook stays in the truck.

The commentary is the reason. It is a genuinely good book to study from at the kitchen table and it is not the reference the examination allows.

This is the expensive version of the mistake, because the Handbook costs the most, looks the most complete, and is the copy a helpful supplier will sell you if you ask for the best one.

Who applied your tabs matters more than where they point

Look at the tabs and ask where they came from.

NEC books may be tabbed with permanent index tabs manufactured and/or provided by the NEC book publisher.

PSI candidate information bulletin, TDLR electrical examinations, dated 9 July 2026

The bulletin then rules out homemade, DIY and non-NEC tabs by name. An index-flag system you cut, labeled and laid out yourself is good work, and it stays home.

The case people keep asking about is settled by the permission rather than by the prohibition. Read that sentence as a list of who and not a list of what. It names one party, the NEC book publisher, and a tab set that came from anywhere else fails it no matter how permanent, how neat or how clearly an index tab it is.

Note which word the bulletin uses. It says publisher, not manufacturer. Those are usually different companies, and the difference is the whole point, because a third-party tab set was manufactured by somebody too. The question the desk is answering is not whether the tabs are professionally made. It is whose they are.

So the tab decision is made when you buy the book rather than afterward. A copy that arrives tabbed by the publisher carries tabs that get through the door. A bare copy plus a tab set off a shelf does not, however neat the job looks, and neither does a copy a seller has pre-tabbed with a set that is not the publisher's. Those are sold, they photograph well, and the listing will not tell you whose tabs are on it.

While you are looking, press every tab back down. They lift, and a tab that falls out in the car is worth about the same as no tab at all.

You may write in it, but only before you arrive

Highlighting, underlining and handwritten notes put in the book beforehand are all accepted. The session closes that off, and the bulletin lists what it closes off: writing, highlighting, underlining, indexing and marking. Tonight is the last time your book gets any better.

Indexing is on that list and it is the one worth noticing, because it means a tab cannot be repositioned once the session starts. Whatever your book is when you sit down is what it is for the next two to five hours.

Most candidates underuse this. You are allowed to write a step order in the margin beside the section it belongs to, to circle the word in a scope sentence that decides whether the article applies, and to put the section number you always confuse it with next to it in ink.

A compliant book is not a clean book. It is a marked-up soft-bound copy carrying publisher tabs, which is exactly what a book looks like after four weeks of work.

Anything loose is not part of the book

Hold the book by the covers and shake it. Whatever falls out was going to be a problem, and so is some of what does not.

Any additional paper (loose, taped, adhered, stapled, etc.) will NOT be allowed.

PSI candidate information bulletin, TDLR electrical examinations, dated 9 July 2026

The parenthesis is where the work is done. Taped in is still additional paper and so is stapled in, so an errata sheet somebody fixed carefully to the inside cover is refused on the same terms as the one that falls on the floor.

The things that come loose are always the same: a printed errata sheet, a formula card, a photocopied table, a page of worked examples, the appointment confirmation somebody folded into the front cover.

The rule is easier to hold onto in that physical form than as a sentence. If it is not bound into the book, it is not coming in.

Which raises the question the prohibition leaves open, and the bulletin answers it in four words.

Electronic notepads will be provided.

PSI candidate information bulletin, TDLR electrical examinations, dated 9 July 2026

So you are not being asked to run a service calculation in your head. You are being given something to work on and told that it is theirs rather than yours. Candidates who have never read this sentence turn up braced to hold four intermediate figures in memory across a chain of steps, which is a self-inflicted way to lose a calculations item.

It is also worth a few minutes of thought before the day, because writing on a device is not writing on paper. Decide in advance how you are going to lay a calculation out on one, and practice at least a couple of problems that way rather than meeting the thing cold.

The calculator, the identification and the clock

Three objects, and only one of them is the code book.

The calculator

Only non-programmable calculators that are silent, battery-operated, do not have paper tape printing capabilities, and do not have a keyboard containing the alphabet will be allowed in the examination site.

PSI candidate information bulletin, TDLR electrical examinations, dated 9 July 2026

The alphabet clause is the one that surprises people. A scientific calculator with a text entry line, the graphing model from a college course, and anything that stores formulas all fail it. Buy the cheap one, then practice on the cheap one, because a calculator you met that morning costs you keystrokes on every item.

The identification

One valid government-issued photo identification, bearing your printed name, your photograph, a signature or fingerprint, your date of birth and an expiration date. A driver license, a state identification card or a passport all satisfy that description.

Check the expiration date rather than assuming it. An expired license is the quietest way to lose a booking, because it is the one thing on this page you carry every day and never look at.

There is one narrow way through with an expired one, and it is worth knowing before you drive rather than after.

An expired driver's license will be accepted only if accompanied by a VALID Texas Department of Public Safety temporary permit.

PSI candidate information bulletin, TDLR electrical examinations, dated 9 July 2026

Read the two conditions on that. The permit is current, and it is a Texas Department of Public Safety permit. A renewal receipt from anywhere else, or a permit that has itself run out, leaves you at the desk holding one expired card.

The clock

PSI asks candidates to arrive half an hour before the appointment time, and the consequence of not doing so is stated flatly.

If you arrive late, you will NOT be admitted to the examination site and you will forfeit your examination registration fee.

PSI candidate information bulletin, TDLR electrical examinations, dated 9 July 2026

Drive the route on a day off if the center is somewhere you have never been. That sentence is the only one here with a price attached to it in writing.

The one check that moves this week

Which edition your book prints is the item on this page most likely to have moved since you last checked, and it turns on the date you sit rather than the date you booked.

Texas adopts the 2026 National Electrical Code effective 1 September 2026 under 16 TAC 73.100, and the examinations reference that edition from the same day. Sit in August and the 2023 book is the right one. Sit in September and it is not.

The bulletin puts it on its own line and in capitals.

EFFECTIVE SEPTEMBER 1, 2026, THE EXAMINATIONS WILL BE REFERENCED TO THE 2026 NEC.

PSI candidate information bulletin, TDLR electrical examinations, dated 9 July 2026

One more distinction, because two separate rules are doing two separate jobs here. The binding sentence permits any soft-bound edition of the code, which is a statement about the object and lets an old book through the door. The edition notice is a statement about the answers. A 2023 book in September is admissible and useless, and nobody at the desk is going to stop you carrying it in.

Everything else above is the same in both months. Do the inspection tonight, put the book by the door, and let tomorrow be about the questions.

What this page cites

NEC and National Electrical Code are registered trademarks of the National Fire Protection Association.

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Bring your own current copy of the National Electrical Code. The Texas exam is open book.

All practice questions are original. They are not actual exam questions.

Built and maintained by Jeff Clerisier, Trojan Digital Marketing.

Every rule here is cited to the section it comes from, and corrections are logged in public with the date. This is study material rather than electrical advice, and it does not replace your own code book or your inspector.