Using the What-If Analysis in Excel
                     USING THE WHAT-IF ANALYSIS 
IN EXCEL
INTRODUCTION TO WHAT-IF 
ANALYSIS
• Say you are taking a class in school, and I'm not doing 
very well so far. Luckily, if you get a high enough grade 
on the final exam, there's a chance you may be able to 
pass the class. The question is: What grade do you need 
to get on the exam to raise your average to at least a 
70? 
• We can find out using a feature called What-If Analysis, 
which allows you to fill in missing information based on 
the data you already have. Right now, all know are the 
grades you got on the first four assignments: 58, 70, 72, 
and 60. Before we do our analysis, we need to figure out 
my current average by adding formula or function in this 
cell. In this case, each assignment is weighted equally, 
so we can calculate the number we need using the 
AVERAGE function. 
WHAT IF ANALYSIS EXAMPLE
• To get the most out of What-If Analysis, you do need to 
be fairly comfortable with formulas and functions-luckily, 
this one is pretty simple.
• We'll just type an equal's sign, and then AVERAGE. Next, 
we need to select all the cells-even the empty cell for 
the final exam grade. If we don't, it won't calculate the 
average for all five assignments. Looks like we're done, 
so I'm just going to press Enter... and now we can see 
my current average. Unfortunately, it's not high enough, 
but we knew that was going to happen. Now we can 
move onto the next step: using a feature called goal to 
seek to figure out what we need on the final exam.
GOAL SEEK
• Goal Seek is a type of What-If Analysis that basically, lets you 
work backward in order to find a missing value. It starts with 
the result you want, then it calculates whatever input is 
needed to get you there. To begin, select the cell that contains 
your formula or function; in our case, B7. Then go to the Data 
tab... and click the What-If Analysis command. There are 
actually several different types of What-If Analysis, including 
Scenario Manager and Data Table. But in this case, we're going 
to use Goal Seek. A dialog box will appear where you can set 
the parameters for the information you need.
COMPLETE SOLUTION
• In our example, we want to set cell B7 (that's our 
selected cell) to a value of 70... by changing the cell that 
contains our missing value. And that's going to be B6. 
When you're done, click OK... and Goal Seek will take a 
minute to see if it can find a solution. Based on the 
message here, it looks like we were successful. So, we're 
going to click OK and now we can see the result we were 
looking for in the final exam cell. So, I guess you need to 
make a 90 on the exam in order to pass the class. It's 
going to be tough, but I think you can do it. At least now 
you know thanks to the work we did with What-If 
Analysis. It might take some practice to get the hang of 
the feature on your own, but it's a great way to figure 
out unknown values in your worksheet.
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