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Home > Excel Tutorials > How to use Goal Seek in Spreadsheets How to use Goal Seek in SpreadsheetsMost spreadsheets take some input (e.g. sales and expenses) and produce some output (e.g. profit). But sometimes you'll want to do the opposite. You might want to find the input that produces a given output. (For example, find the sales that give a certain profit.) Goal Seek does this; it runs your spreadsheet in "reverse".The easiest way to learn about Goal Seek is to try an example. Suppose you're at college. Your overall grade is the average mark from four assignments. Your marks for the first three assignments are 75, 90 and 81. What do you need to score in the last assignment to get an overall grade of 80? It's easy to calculate your final grade when you know all your assignment scores. But here you don't know your final assignment mark. That's where Goal Seek can help. Try setting up this spreadsheet:  Fig. 1 - Goal Seek Spreadsheet Example Cell B6 is currently 0 (because you don't know your score for assignment 4). You want to change it so that cell B8 becomes 80. Goal Seek will do this for you. Go to the Tools menu and select Goal Seek; this will start Goal Seek. You'll see a dialog box like this:  Fig. 2 - Goal Seek Initial Dialog Box Enter values into the dialog box so that it looks like this:  Fig. 3 - Goal Seek Completed Dialog Box Now click on OK. After a few moments you'll see something like this:  Fig. 4 - Goal Seek Results Dialog Box This tells you that Goal Seek has finished. To close the dialog box, click on OK. Notice how cell B8 has changed to 80. Notice also that cell B6 has become 74. That means your overall grade will be 80 if you score 74 on assignment 4.  Fig. 5 - Goal Seek Updated Spreadsheet See how Goal Seek found the answer for you. All you had to do was: 1. Enter the value you wanted (80) and its location (B8). 2. Choose the cell you wanted to change (B6). Goal Seek is really easy to use. And it's capable of solving very complex problems - not just simple ones like this. Give it a go. You'll be pleasantly surprised with the results. |
Other Tutorials
How do I find the last used cell in a column? (Part 1)
How do I find the last used cell in a column? (Part 2) How to Display Formulas in an Excel Worksheet Using Excel to Solve Simultaneous Linear Equations How to use Conditional Formatting How to use Names How to Manually Install an Excel Add-in Useful Worksheet Functions |
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