By Bill Jelen

Bill Jelen is the author of 24 books on Microsoft Office Excel. He is a regular guest on TechTV with Leo Laporte and the host of MrExcel.com, which includes more than 300,000 questions and answers about Excel.

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. You can use a data table to compare several what-if scenarios. For example, if you want to buy a car, you can compare different prices and loan terms to calculate your monthly payment amount.

This article is an excerpt from Learn Excel 97-2007 from MrExcel by Bill Jelen. Buy the print edition or download a free e-book edition from MrExcel.com.

Other articles by this author

Excel 2007

• Sort all red cells to the top of a report
• Use validation to create dependent lists
• How to fit a multiline heading into one cell
• Change the width of all columns with one command
• How to make a wide report fit to one page wide by many pages tall
• For each cell in column A, have three rows in column B
• Customize anything on a chart by right-clicking
• Display a chart axis in trillions
• Raise a number to a fraction to find the square or third root
• Total minutes that exceed an hour
• Calculate a running percentage of total
• Calculate a trendline forecast
• Rank scores in Excel 2007
• Back into an answer using Goal Seek

Excel 2003

• Use color banding to locate the active cell
• Three ways to convert numbers to text
• Five ways to subtotal values in repeating data
• Conditional formatting: Considering the fourth option
• Locate duplicates by using conditional formatting
• Change cell background color using VBA