Goal Seek and One-Way Data Tables With What-if Analysis Tools In Excel

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In this video, you began using Excel's helpful What-If Analysis tools. These tools make it easy for Excel to handle tricky calculations so you can explore different situations step by step.

With data tables, you can see what happens when you change the inputs for formulas. On the other hand, Goal Seek lets you start with a goal in mind and figure out what you need to input to reach that goal.

Goal Seek - With Goal Seek, you can tell Excel the output you want from a formula. Then, Excel will go through the trial and error process for you, saving you the work and usually giving a more precise answer than you could guess yourself.

The application of Goal Seek that you saw in the example was finding the break-even point, when a company’s profit is zero.

A one-way data table (also called a one-variable data table) lets you see how one or more outputs change as a single input changes.