Excel What If Analysis Made Easy Scenario Modeling For Beginners

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Dec 28, 2025, 10:53 AM

excel what if analysis made easy scenario modeling for beginners

Facebook Twitter LinkedIn WhatsApp Email Ask a question or join the conversation for all things Excel on our Slack channel. If you’ve ever experimented with different variables to see how your changes would affect the outcome of a situation, you’ve done a what-if analysis. Would you be able to sell more items if you had a sale this week? Or would you make more money by increasing the price instead? In the above scenarios, you want to know the degree to which each change affects the overall outcome.

For this reason, a what-if analysis is also known as a sensitivity analysis. Most what-if analyses are really mathematical calculations, and that is Excel’s specialty. To help you do a what-if analysis, Excel uses commands from the Forecast command group on the Data tab to prepare simple forecasts or advanced business models. When planning or analyzing data in Excel, it’s crucial to understand how changes in your inputs can affect the outcome. Excel offers powerful what-if analysis tools like Scenario Manager, Goal Seek, and Data Tables that let you explore different possibilities without altering your original data. In this article, we will teach you each technique step by step so you can confidently model, forecast, and plan in Excel.

To use what-if analysis with Goal Seek in Excel, follow the steps below: ➤ Go to the Data tab, click What-If Analysis, and choose Goal Seek. ➤ In the Goal Seek dialog box: For “Set cell“, select the cell that contains your target outcome, which is B10 (Net Profit). For “To value“, enter your desired net profit, which is 5000. For “By changing cell“, select the input cell that Goal Seek should adjust to reach your target. ➤ Press OK, and Excel will automatically change the input(cell B5) to reach your goal with net profit of $5,000(cell B10).

What-if analysis in Excel lets you explore how changes in inputs affect your final results. Instead of manually changing different values, Excel offers built-in tools that automate the process and help you evaluate various scenarios. There are three main types of what-if analysis: Scenario Manager: It lets you store and switch between multiple sets of input values to compare different outcomes. Goal Seek: This helps you find the exact input needed to reach a specific result. Data Tables: It allows you to test how one or two variables affect your results across a range of values.

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A newsletter for finance pros—by finance pros. Get practical, strategic finance insights from those who’ve been there—straight to your inbox. Curious how small changes can impact your Excel models? Discover how to use What-If Analysis tools—Scenario Manager, Goal Seek, and Data Tables—to explore possibilities and make smarter decisions. Have you ever wondered how a slight change in your budget, sales numbers, or interest rate might affect your final results? That’s precisely where What-If Analysis in Excel comes in.

Whether you're planning a budget, forecasting sales, or making business decisions, What-If Analysis helps you explore different possibilities before committing to one. In this tutorial, we’ll walk through what defines What-If Analysis, and show you exactly which tools are used to perform What-If Analysis in Excel. Essentially, it gives you the opportunity to explore new possibilities by examining your data. It makes exploring what happens if you change different values in your spreadsheet simple. Simply put, you’re trying out what-ifs, keeping your actual data intact. By using What-If Analysis tools in Excel, you can use several different sets of values in one or more formulas to explore all the various results.

For example, you can do What-If Analysis to build two budgets that each assumes a certain level of revenue. Or, you can specify a result that you want a formula to produce, and then determine what sets of values will produce that result. Excel provides several different tools to help you perform the type of analysis that fits your needs. Note that this is just an overview of those tools. There are links to help topics for each one specifically. What-If Analysis is the process of changing the values in cells to see how those changes will affect the outcome of formulas on the worksheet.

Three kinds of What-If Analysis tools come with Excel: Scenarios, Goal Seek, and Data Tables. Scenarios and Data tables take sets of input values and determine possible results. A Data Table works with only one or two variables, but it can accept many different values for those variables. A Scenario can have multiple variables, but it can only accommodate up to 32 values. Goal Seek works differently from Scenarios and Data Tables in that it takes a result and determines possible input values that produce that result. The What-If Analysis is a feature used to observe the different scenarios when one or more variables change resulting in a change in the overall outcome.

It helps us build different scenarios, achieve goal seek numbers, and create data tables using variables. For instance, a printing shop prints approximately 1000 copies per day. Therefore, the estimated profit is calculated as $500. So, now we need to know what the profit will be using what-if scenarios such as what if the company prints 1500 copies, 2000 copies, and 2500 copies. By using What-If analysis, we can create scenarios for profit. So, let us learn how to use what if analysis in Excel in detail.

There are three types of what-if analysis in excel. They are: We need to choose any of the above three methods to perform a What-If analysis in excel. Published: December 18, 2024 - 3 min read Excel’s What-If Analysis tools help you explore different outcomes by varying key inputs in your calculations. Whether you’re forecasting sales, planning budgets, or analyzing investment returns, these tools let you test multiple scenarios without manually changing your spreadsheet data.

Let’s explore how to use Data Tables, Scenario Manager, and Goal Seek to make better-informed business decisions. Data Tables allow you to see how different input values affect your formulas’ results. You can create both one-variable and two-variable analyses. Example one-variable data table showing investment returns: Example two-variable data table showing investment returns with different time periods: What-If Analysis in Excel allows you to try out different values (scenarios) for formulas.

The following example helps you master what-if analysis quickly and easily. Assume you own a book store and have 100 books in storage. You sell a certain % for the highest price of $50 and a certain % for the lower price of $20. If you sell 60% for the highest price, cell D10 calculates a total profit of 60 * $50 + 40 * $20 = $3800. But what if you sell 70% for the highest price? And what if you sell 80% for the highest price?

Or 90%, or even 100%? Each different percentage is a different scenario. You can use the Scenario Manager to create these scenarios. Note: you can simply type in a different percentage into cell C4 to see the corresponding result of a scenario in cell D10. However, what-if analysis enables you to easily compare the results of different scenarios. Read on.

Scenario manager in Excel is an element of three what-if-analysis tools in Excel, which are in-built features in excel. You can notice the effect of switching input values without altering the existing data. It works like the data table in Excel. You must input data that should change to acquire a particular outcome. Scenario Manager in Excel lets you change or replace input values for numerous cells. You will be able see the output of different inputs or different scenarios at the same time.

You’re looking for a rental house. There are some available options to choose from. We can consider these options as scenarios. You have to decide which house you want before making the final decision in order to save more money. To illustrate this, we will use the following sample dataset: This is for House 1.

Excel What If Analysis Made Easy Scenario Modeling For Beginners

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