Creating Scenarios

Because some worksheet data is constantly evolving, the ability to create multiple scenarios lets you speculate on a variety of outcomes . For example, the marketing department might want to see how its budget would be affected if sales decreased by 25 percent. Although it's easy enough to plug in different numbers in formulas, Excel allows you to save these values and then recall them at a later time. The ability to create, save, and modify scenarios means a business will be better prepared for different outcomes to avoid economic surprises .

Create and Show a Scenario

Click the Tools menu, and then click Scenarios.

Click Add.

Type a name that identifies the scenario.

Type the cells you want to modify in the scenario, or click the Collapse Dialog button, use your mouse to select the cells , and then click the Expand Dialog button.

If you want, type a comment.

Click OK.

Type values for each of the displayed changing cells.

Click OK.

Click Close.

Show a Scenario

Click the Tools menu, and then click Scenarios.

Select the scenario you want to see.

Click Show.

Click Close.

Did You Know?

You can create a scenario summary report . Click the Tools menu, click Scenarios, click Summary, click the Scenario Summary option, and then click OK. A scenario summary worksheet tab appears with the report.